Deployment of Available Rail Steels to Reduce Life Cycle Costs

The rate of rail degradation and hence its expected life is not uniform throughout any railway network and is governed by a combination of track, traffic and operating characteristics in addition to the metallurgical attributes of the steel. Consequently, it is suggested that any route or network is not a single linear asset but is a compilation of individual segments with different track characteristics, degradation rates and expected life spans. Thus, the choice of rail steel grade to maximise life span needs to combine the knowledge of the metallurgical attributes of the available rail steels with the conditions prevailing at the wheel-rail and vehicle-track interfaces. This approach has been the focus of research at the University of Huddersfield Institute of Railway Research (IRR) and this paper describes some of the results from the EPSRC/RSSB/DfT sponsored project entitled “Designing Steel Composition and Microstructure to Better Resist Degradation during Wheel-Rail Contact”. The paper is focussed on:
- Classification of the susceptibility to rail degradation in various parts of a mixed-traffic network.
- Metallurgical attributes of the currently available rail steels