Validity and informativity enhancement of ultrasonic testing of cast parts of railway rolling stock

Introduction. Due to the process reasons, the structure of cast parts of the railway rolling stock (RRS) often has embedded flaws that affect drastically their strength. The degree of impact depends on many factors including the shape and location of defects in the product. The shape of the defect has the greatest effect under alternating loads. This often refers to dynamically loaded parts of the RRS underframe. The defect oriented perpendicularly to the direction of tensile loads reduces the component life to the maximum. To identify embedded flaws, the parts are subjected to ultrasonic testing by the classical pulse-echo technique. However, such methods require increased validity and informativity. For example, they do not provide the determination of the type and orientation of the defect. Materials and Methods. Features, advantages and disadvantages of the classical pulse-echo technique of the ultrasonic non-destructive testing, which is based on the registration of the following echo signals, are considered: sent; reflected from the opposite surface (bottom) of the object; reflected from the defect (if any)...