BILLERICA, MA-Taiyuan Heavy Industry Co. (TYHI), a manufacturer of rail wheels, axles and wheel sets in China, has selected GE Sensing & Inspection Technologies as its provider of ultrasonic inspection equipment for rail wheel production. GE’s ultrasonic testing machines can perform an inspection of an entire wheel in one minute, elevating productivity of TYHI’s wheel manufacturing process and reducing inspection cost.

“We have high expectations of the cooperation prospects with GE,” says Zhiyuan Shen, vice general manager of the wheel and axle division of TYHI. “With our rich experiences in the domestic rail wheel field, and GE’s global leading technologies and service capabilities, we hope the cooperation will help TYHI win in the growing rail wheel market in China.”

For this project, GE offered TYHI a turnkey ultrasonic inspection solution. This system solution, based on phased array technology, was specially developed for railway applications. In this system, two phased array probes are used to realize the inspection of the wheel from the tread surface to the rim surface.

The inspection of the whole wheel can be completed in one rotation. It takes one minute to finish the inspection of the entire wheel, including the wheel handling time. The phased array probes can be adjusted for the inspection of a variety of wheels, improving the efficiency of the process and reducing the inspection cost.