Rolling Contact Fatigue Damage of High-speed Railway Wheels with Upper Bainite

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Guanzhen Zhang ◽  
Chunpeng Liu ◽  
Si Wu ◽  
Sa Zhao ◽  
Bin Zhang

Abstract This work investigates the effect of abnormal microstructure on rolling contact fatigue (RCF) damage of high-speed railway wheels under service and the formation mechanism of abnormal microstructure by optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, nano indentation and laser-induced break down spectroscopy. Results show that there are large amounts of upper bainite in the wheel tread, which destroyed the uniformity of the microstructures of the wheel matrix. The bainite is composed of ferrite with high density of dislocations and short bar-shaped cementite. The bainite exhibited higher hardness and elasticity but lower plasticity than the matrix microstructure. The incongruity of plastic deformation between upper bainite and matrix microstructures will lead to stress concentration at boundary of the microstructures, thus accelerating the RCF crack initiation and propagation. The formation of upper bainite is caused by carbon segregation. Segregation of carbon element will make the continuous cooling transformation (CCT) curve shift to the right significantly, thus increasing the probability of bainite transformation in segregation zone at higher cooling rate. Therefore, large amounts of upper bainite were formed at wheel tread.

2010 ◽  
Vol 654-656 ◽  
pp. 2499-2502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chan Woo Lee ◽  
Seok Jin Kwon

Wheels of the railway vehicle play the important role for driving train through wheel-rail interaction. Especially wheel profile is one of the most important design factors to rule the running stability and safety of train. Accordingly, the control of rolling contact fatigue-related defects is an ongoing concern for both safety and cost reasons. This process is referred to as ratcheting. Wear of wheel and rail surfaces occur due to a mixture of adhesive, abrasive and corrosive processes. In wheel/rail systems with little wear, such failure is manifested by the appearance of closely spaced micro-cracks. In the present paper, a evaluation of surface defects of wheel and rail for Korean high-speed railway. The main research application is the wheel-rail maintenance of Korea high-speed train.


Author(s):  
Xiaochuan Ma ◽  
Ping Wang ◽  
Jingmang Xu ◽  
Rong Chen ◽  
Linya Liu

Considering the complex characteristics of the track structure in railway turnouts, it is difficult and also expensive to experimentally study rail damages; therefore, numerical methods are an effective alternative. This study presents a numerical method to simulate rail surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue in the switch panel of railway turnouts. This method includes simulation of the vehicle–turnout wheel–rail dynamic interaction, analysis of the wheel–rail multipoint non-Hertzian rolling contact that considers the relative motion between the switch and stock rails, and calculation of the accumulated rail surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. The accumulated rail surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue after the vehicles passed a turnout switch panel 80 times (the average number of vehicles running on the Chinese high-speed railway lines per day) in the through route with facing move was simulated based on this procedure. The result showed that the maximum surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue damage of the switch rail and the stock rail was 1.57 × 10−2 and 0.62 × 10−2, respectively. Surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue in the switch rail mainly occurred at the gauge angle, and in the stock rail it mainly occurred at the center of the rail. In addition, the influence of track parameters (rail inclination, track gauge, and friction coefficient) is analyzed. The friction coefficient influenced the rail surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue. When the coefficient exceeded 0.3 in particular, the rail rolling contact fatigue damage increased sharply. Hence, suitable friction control measures should be taken during rail maintenance in order to mitigate the rail surface-initiated rolling contact fatigue damage, e.g. by keeping the wheel–rail friction coefficient below 0.3.


Author(s):  
J C O Nielsen ◽  
A Ekberg ◽  
R Lundén

A numerical procedure to integrate simulation of high-frequency dynamic train-track interaction and prediction of rolling contact fatigue (RCF) impact is presented. Features of the included models and possibilities of applications are outlined. The influence of short-pitch rail corrugation and wheel out-of-roundness (OOR) on RCF of a high-speed passenger train is investigated. It is shown how the corrugation and the OOR will have a profound effect in that levels of wheel and rail irregularities that have been measured in the field may be sufficient to generate subsurface-initiated RCF. In particular, the high-frequency content of the contact forces is of importance. Errors induced by neglecting such high-frequency components in measurements and/or simulations are investigated by comparing RCF indices based on contact forces that have been low-pass filtered with various cut-off frequencies. To avoid cracking due to RCF, a maximum roughness level in the wavelength interval up to 10 cm is sought. To limit the effects of corrugation, grinding practices have been altered leading to a significant decrease in RCF.


2011 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 2627-2632 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Langueh ◽  
J-F. Brunel ◽  
E. Charkaluk ◽  
P. Dufrénoy ◽  
F. Demilly

Metals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 911
Author(s):  
Qiang Wu ◽  
Tao Qin ◽  
Mingxue Shen ◽  
Kangjie Rong ◽  
Guangyao Xiong ◽  
...  

The influence of surface gas nitriding on wheel/rail rolling contact fatigue and wear behavior of CL60 wheel was studied on a new rolling contact fatigue/wear tester (JD-DRCF/M). The failure mechanisms of the wheel/rail surface after the gas nitriding and without gas nitriding on the wheel surface were compared and analyzed. The results show that the wheel with gas nitriding could form a dense and hard white bright layer which was approximately 25 μm thick and a diffusion layer which was approximately 70 μm thick on the wheel surface. Thus, the gas nitriding on the railway wheel not only significantly improved the wear resistance on the surface of the wheel, but also effectively reduced the wear of the rail; the results show that the material loss reduced by 58.05% and 10.77%, respectively. After the wheel surface was subjected to gas nitriding, the adhesive coefficient between the wheel/rail was reduced by 11.7% in dry conditions, and was reduced by 18.4% in water media, but even so, the wheel with gas nitriding still could keep a satisfactory adhesive coefficient between the wheel/rail systems, which can prevent the occurrence of phenomena such as wheel-slip. In short, the gas nitriding on the wheel surface can effectively reduce the wear, and improve the rolling contact fatigue resistance of the wheel/rail system. This study enlarges the application field of gas nitriding and provides a new method for the surface protection of railway wheels in heavy-duty transportation.


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