2003 Volume 44 Issue 4 Pages 154-159
In order to develop an efficient method for the maintenance of railway structures, acoustic emission (AE) techniques were focused on. The characteristics of secondary AE induced by train loading were investigated and experiments using model piles and in-situ AE monitoring of in-service railway bridges conducted, from which it was demonstrated that the proposed method is practicable enough to detect invisible defects. A new index, known as RTRI (ratio of Repeated Train load at the onset of AE activity to Relative maximum load for Inspection period) was proposed for the evaluation of structural integrity based on the results of in-situ AE monitoring.
