The wear resistance of rails has been improved by increasing the strength through decreasing the pearlite lamellar spacing. In conventional heat-treated rails containing eutectoid carbon, it was a metallurgical challenge to accomplish still a higher strength with high stability. The authors studied the effect of the cementite density of pearlite lamellae on the wear resistance of rails by making use of hepereutectoid steel. As a result, it was confirmed that the increase in the carbon content to a hypereutectoid region improves the wear resistance as compared with that of the eutectoid steel, and at the same time decreases the dependence of the pearlite transformation temperature on the cooling rate and increases the hardness in the depth direction of the rail head. It was also confirmed that the ductility loss of hypereutectoid steel can be prevented by reducing the austenite grain size to refine the pearlite block. Hypereutectoid steel rails with higher than ever wear resistance and internal fatigue damage resistance were developed, based on these findings. The new rails have already been installed on heavy-haul railways in North America and are proving to have a long life.
Application of hypereutectoid steel to heavy haul track rail
1997
14 Seiten, 3 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Development of Hypereutectoid Steel Rails for Heavy Haul Railways
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