US Patent Issued to Southwest Research Institute on Sept. 9 for "Reference-free load-modulated longitudinal rail stress measurement using ultrasonic LCR waves" (Texas Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 10 -- United States Patent no. 12,411,111, issued on Sept. 9, was assigned to Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio).

"Reference-free load-modulated longitudinal rail stress measurement using ultrasonic LCR waves" was invented by Xin Chen (San Antonio), Adam C. Cobb (San Antonio), Douglas R. Earnest (San Antonio) and Keith A. Bartels (San Antonio).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of in situ measurement of an acoustoelastic constant (L) of a railway rail, using an ultrasonic wedge sensor to measure a stress-free (unloaded) time-of-flight (t0) in the vertical direction of the rail. Next, a vertical load of known load value is applied to the rail. While the verti...