Lewis, R., Christoforou, P. orcid.org/0000-0001-8547-4878, Wang, W.J. et al. (3 more authors) (2019) Investigation of the influence of rail hardness on the wear of rail and wheel materials under dry conditions (ICRI wear mapping project). Wear, 430-431. pp. 383-392. ISSN 0043-1648
Abstract
Some railway managers and practitioners fear that introducing premium rail materials will have a detrimental effect on the wheels of trains that use the line. A review of relevant investigations across all scales in the laboratory, and in the field has been carried out. This showed that, as rail hardness increases, its wear, and overall system wear reduces. Wheel wear does increase with increasing rail hardness, but only for wheels running on rails that are softer than them. Similar trends were observed in all studies, so it seems that the fears were unfounded.
While the wear trends appear well characterised some issues have been identified. One relates to the varying work hardening capability of wheel and rail materials. Often only bulk hardness is quoted, but work hardening can increase material surface hardness by up to 2.5 times and make materials that were initially softer, harder than the opposing material. Another related issue is test length. It is essential that enough cycles are applied such that the materials reach steady state wear, i.e., the point at which work hardening has reached its limit. In previous work it is not always clear that steady state wear has been reached. Some gaps have been identified in the current knowledge base, the largest of which is the failure to determine which mechanisms lead to the wear trends seen.
Analysis of recent work on different clad layers on rail discs and premium rail materials allowed some of these gaps to be addressed. Results indicated that opposing wheel material hardened to the same level independent of rail hardness. Wheel wear is therefore stress driven under the conditions used, and dictated by the wheel material properties only. At higher slip levels relationships become less clear, but here temperature and therefore hot hardness is most influential and is as yet uncharacterised.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Elsevier B.V. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Wear. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Wheel and rail materials hardness effects on wear; Wear rates; Work hardening; Wear mechanisms; Laser cladding of rail |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Mechanical Engineering (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jun 2019 14:02 |
Last Modified: | 29 May 2020 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.wear.2019.05.030 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:147261 |
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