Crack Detection System for Railway Track Projects For Final Year Engineering Students                         

Introduction:

Transport is very important to carry passengers and goods from one place to another. Better transport leads to more trade. The economic level mainly depends on increasing the capacity and level of transport. This system presents an implementation of an efficient and cost-effective solution suitable for railway application. In this system we are going to use the probe to detect the crack in the railroad, when the crack is detected its latitude and longitude values are sent as a message to a nearby station by using Microcontroller. The other important component is the probe which is used to detect the presence of cracks in the track.

Block diagram explanation :

Power supply unit:

This section needs two voltages viz., +12 V & +5 V, as working voltages. Hence specially designed power supply is constructed to get regulated power supplies.

Buffers:

  Buffers do not affect the logical state of a digital signal (i.e. a logic 1 input results in a logic 1 output whereas logic 0 input results in a logic 0 output). Buffers are normally used to provide extra current drive at the output but can also be used to regularize the logic present at an interface.

Drivers:

  This section is used to drive the relay where the output is the complement of input which is applied to the drive but the current will be amplified.

Relays:

  It is an electromagnetic device that is used to drive the load connected across the relay and the o/p of the relay can be connected to the controller or load for further processing.

Indicator:

 This stage provides a visual indication of which relay is actuated and deactivated, by a glowing respective LCD or Buzzer.

Microcontroller:

   The 89C51 Microcontroller is the heart of this project. It is the chip that processes the User Data and executes the same. The software inherited in this chip manipulates the data and sends the result for visual display.

  The general definition of a microcontroller is a single-chip computer, which refers to the fact that they contain all of the functional sections (cpu, ram, rom, i/o, ports, and timers) of a traditionally defined computer on a single integrated circuit. Some experts even describe them as special-purpose computers with several qualifying distinctions that separate them from other computers. 

Features Of Microcontroller :

1. 8K Bytes of In-System Reprogrammable Flash Memory.
2. Endurance: 1,000 Write/Erase Cycles.
3. Fully Static Operation: 0 Hz to 24 MHz
4. Three-level Program Memory Lock.
5. 256 x 8-bit Internal RAM.
6. 32 Programmable I/O Lines.
7. Three 16-bit Timers/Counters.

Methodology:

   The above block diagram shows the setup of Railway Automation using probes & microcontrollers.  If find any crack in the railway track then continuity breaks in probes, and it generates the output. The output of the probe is fed to the buffer IC 4050, buffer stores, and given to the driver IC 2003  in driver current will amplify and voltage will invert with the help of the Darlington pair circuit of the driver IC  to drive the relay. The output of the relay is fed to the Microcontroller. Microcontroller generates the output and displays the message track is cut.                     

Advantages:

1. Fully automatic
2. Low power consumption
3. Low cost to design the circuit, maintenance of the circuit is good
4. Easy convenience to handle.

Disadvantages:

1. One-time investment cost.
2. It has to be planted throughout the city.

Applications:

1. Our project however possesses the inherent advantage of facilitating monitoring of rail tracks daily during nights when the usual train traffic is suspended.