Research on a quality detection system of dust suppression spraying for railway coal transportation using laser backscattering technology

Aiming at the low efficiency of manual sample inspection of dust suppression spraying quality in railway coal transportation, a detection system combining a high-pressure gas spraying and laser backscattering detection technology is presented in this paper. In terms of hardware, it is composed of gas excitation, powdered coal concentration detection and a control unit. The gas excitation device, including nozzle, camera and electric control platform, is designed for realizing the dust suppressant spraying quality detection by nozzle jet gas impacts on a coal surface. In terms of software, the programs for the system were developed based on the LabVIEW development platform, realizing the system parameter adjustment, detection signal display, gas excitation control and real-time data storage functions. Experimental results show that the gas pressure of the field test should be maintained at 0.9 MPa–1.23 MPa and the distance between the equipment and the target vehicle is more than 2000 mm. The proposed system can detect 3–4 times spot checks with a single carriage for the train under the speed of 3 m s−1–5 m s−1, which solves the problems of low efficiency and high risk of manual detection.