A new step-cooling process for strength and toughness matching control of vanadium-containing railway wheels:effect of intragranular ferrite

To improve the competitive relationship between strength and toughness,the effect of low undercooling in austenite(γ)on the microstructure and mechanical properties of commercial vanadium-containing wheel steels was studied using an optical microscope(OM),a scanning electron microscope(SEM),a transmission electron microscope(TEM),and mechanical property tests.The results show that when the wheel steel is slightly cooled to an appropriate temperature above A c3 point for a short time after it has been austenitized at an elevated temperature,the solid-solved vanadium is pre-precipitated in the form of V(C,N)second phase semicoherent with the matrix in the originalγgrain.This phase hardly participates in matrix strengthening.Due to the small mismatch between V(C,N)and ferrite(α),during the subsequent-cooling phase transformation stage,the pre-precipitated second phase becomes theαnucleation point,causing granular and ellipsoidal intragranular ferrite(IGF,with an average size of 4-6μm)to nucleate in the originalγ.The IGF production and strength loss increases with the increasing undercooling degree.Based on this,Masteel Co.,Ltd.has developed a new heat-treatment step-cooling process that can promote the formation of IGF,considerably improving the level and uniformity of fracture toughness on the premise that the strength and hardness of the wheel are almost unchanged.

Experimental Study on Wear and Spalling Behaviors of Railway Wheel

The current researches of the wear and spalling behaviors of wheel/rail materials focus on the field investigation rather than the mechanism. However, it is necessary and significant for clarifying the mechanism and relationship between the wear and spalling damage of railway wheel to test and reproduce the wheel damages in laboratory. The objective of this paper is to investigate the wear and spalling damage behaviors of railway wheel using a JD-1 wheel/rail simulation facility, which consists of a small wheel serving as rolling stock wheel, and a larger wheel serving as rail. The damage process of wheel roller is explored in terms of the creep ratio, axle load, and carbon content by means of various microscopic examinations. The experimental results show that the wear volume growth of wheel roller is proved to be proportional to the increase of the creep ratio and normal load between simulating wheel and rail. The increase of carbon content of wheel material causes a linear reduction in the wear volume. The microscopic examinations indicate that the rolling wear mechanism transfers from abrasive wear to adhesive and fatigue wear with an increase of tangential friction force, which results in the initiation of fatigue crack, and then aggravates spalling damage on the wheel roller surface. The surface hardness of material depends strongly upon its carbon content. The decrease of the carbon content of wheel material may alleviate spalling damage, but can cause a significant growth in the wear volume of wheel roller. Therefore, there is a competitive relationship between the wear and spalling damage of wheel material. This research proposes an important measure for alleviating or preventing the wear and spalling damage of railway wheel material.

Numerical simulation of wheel wear evolution for heavy haul railway

The prediction of the wheel wear is a fundamental problem in heavy haul railway. A numerical methodology is introduced to simulate the wheel wear evolution of heavy haul freight car. The methodology includes the spatial coupling dynamics of vehicle and track, the three-dimensional rolling contact analysis of wheel-rail, the Specht's material wear model, and the strategy for reproducing the actual operation conditions of railway. The freight vehicle is treated as a full 3D rigid multi-body model. Every component is built detailedly and various contact interactions between parts are accurately simulated, taking into account the real clearances. The wheel-rail rolling contact calculation is carried out based on Hertz's theory and Kalker's FASTSIM algorithm. The track model is built based on field measurements. The material loss due to wear is evaluated according to the Specht's model in which the wear coefficient varies with the wear intensity. In order to exactly reproduce the actual operating conditions of railway,dynamic simulations are performed separately for all possible track conditions and running velocities in each iterative step.Dimensionless weight coefficients are introduced that determine the ratios of different cases and are obtained through site survey. For the wheel profile updating, an adaptive step strategy based on the wear depth is introduced, which can effectively improve the reliability and stability of numerical calculation. At last, the wear evolution laws are studied by the numerical model for different wheels of heavy haul freight vehicle running in curves. The results show that the wear of the front wheelset is more serious than that of the rear wheelset for one bogie, and the difference is more obvious for the outer wheels. The wear of the outer wheels is severer than that of the inner wheels. The wear of outer wheels mainly distributes near the flange and the root; while the wear of inner wheels mainly distributes around the nominal rolling circle. For the outer wheel of front wheelset of each bogie, the development of wear is gradually concentrated on the flange and the developing speed increases continually with the increase of traveled distance.

Railway wheel profile fine-tuning system for profile recommendation

This paper develops a wheel profile fine-tuning system(WPFTS)that comprehensively considers the influence of wheel profile on wheel damage,vehicle stability,vehicle safety,and passenger comfort.WPFTS can recommend one or more optimized wheel profiles according to train operators’needs,e.g.,reducing wheel wear,mitigating the development of wheel out-of-roundness(OOR),improving the shape stability of the wheel profile.Specifically,WPFTS includes four modules:(I)a wheel profile generation module based on the rotary-scaling finetuning(RSFT)method;(II)a multi-objective generation module consisting of a rigid multi-body dynamics simulation(MBS)model,an analytical model,and a rigid–flexible MBS model,for generating 11 objectives related to wheel damage,vehicle stability,vehicle safety,and passenger comfort;(III)a weight assignment module consisting of an adaptive weight assignment strategy and a manual weight assignment strategy;and(IV)an optimization module based on radial basis function(RBF)and particle swarm optimization(PSO).Finally,three cases are introduced to show how WPTFS recommends a wheel profile according to train operators’needs.Among them,a wheel profile with high shape stability,a wheel profile for mitigating the development of wheel OOR,and a wheel profile considering hunting stability and derailment safety are developed,respectively.

Modelling of temperature and strain rate dependent behaviour of pearlitic steel in block braked railway wheels

Block braked railway wheels are subjected to thermal and rolling contact loading.The thermal loading results in high temperatures and thermal stresses which cause slow time dependent processes such as creep,relaxation and static recovery of the wheel material.At the same time,the rolling contact loading implies a very fast mechanical load application.This paper is focused on material modeling of pearlitic steel for a wide range of loading rates at elevated temperatures.The starting point is a viscoplasticity model including nonlinear isotropic and kinematic hardening.The Delobelle overstress function is employed to capture strain rate dependent response of the material.The model also includes static recovery of the hardening to capture slower viscous(diffusion dominated)behaviour of the material.Experiments for the pearlitic wheel steel ER7 in terms of cyclic strain-controlled uniaxial tests with hold-time,uniaxial ratchetting tests including rapid cycles and biaxial cyclic tests with tension/compression and torsion are used to calibrate the material model.These experiments were performed under isothermal conditions at different temperatures.In the ratchetting tests,higher loading rates are obtained and these have been used to calibrate the high strain rate response of the viscoplasticity model.The paper is concluded with a numerical example of a block braked wheel where the importance of accounting for the viscoplasticity in modelling is highlighted.

Effect of wheelset flexibility on wheel–rail contact behavior and a specific coupling of wheel–rail contact to flexible wheelset

The fexibility of a train＇s wheelset can have a large effect on vehicle–track dynamic responses in the medium to high frequency range.To investigate the effects of wheelset bending and axial deformation of the wheel web,a specifi coupling of wheel–rail contact with a fexible wheelset is presented and integrated into a conventional vehicle–track dynamic system model.Both conventional and the proposed dynamic system models are used to carry out numerical analyses on the effects of wheelset bending and axial deformation of the wheel web on wheel–rail rolling contact behaviors.Excitations with various irregularities and speeds were considered.The irregularities included measured track irregularity and harmonic irregularities with two different wavelengths.The speeds ranged from 200 to400km/h.The results show that the proposed model can characterize the effects of fexible wheelset deformation on the wheel–rail rolling contact behavior very well.

Experiment and Simulation of Metal Flow in Multi-stage Forming Process of Railway Wheel

To investigate the metal flow during the railway wheel forming process, experiments and finite element method （FEM） simulation were carried out. An axisymmetric modeling for the wheel rolling process was proposed to predict the metal flow in radial direction, by which the whole multi-stage forming process could be simulated in axisymmetric and integral way. The result shows that the axisymmetric simulation method was an effective method to explore the metal flow in radial direction and to analyze the relationships of tools motion during the wheel rolling. The detail information about metal flow in railway wheel forming process was obtained. The metal in the wheel web was from the area near the half radius of the original billet; the chill zone of the billet became an envelope of the rim and part of the web with a maximum thickness of about 6 mm below the tread. At the wheel rolling stage, the metal in the rim flowed towards the web; the metal near the surfaces of the conjunction region between the web and rim suffered severe shear deformation.

Austenite Grain Size Evolution in Railway Wheel During Multi-Stage Forging Processes

The knowledge of microstructure evolution of railway wheel during hot forming process is the prerequisite of improving mechanical properties of the final product.In order to investigate the austenite grain size evolution of railway wheel during multi-stage forging process,mathematical models of recrystallization and austenite grain growth were derived firstly by hot compression tests for railway wheel steel CL50D,which then were integrated with a thermal-mechanical finite element model by the developed subroutines.The information about kinetics of recrystallization and grain size distribution during the forging process was obtained by simulation.The predicted results were validated by experiments in an industrial scale,and the average error between the predicted grain sizes and the measured ones is about 5%.The result shows that,under the current railway wheel forging process,the grain size distribution after final forging is inhomogeneous extremely.There is a narrow coarse grain zone between the external part and center of the hub caused by static recrystallization after final forging.With cooling of 60 s after final forging,the grain size is about 85 μm for the areas near the web surface and 175 μm for center areas of the hub and rim.

Effect of Sulfur Contents on Fracture Toughness of Wheel Steels for High Speed Train

The effect of different contents of S on fracture toughness of railway wheel steels for high speed train has been researched.The results show that there are kinds of non-metallic inclusion when O content retaining at about 10×10-6,such as Al 2 O 3 inclusions and Al 2 O 3 +MnS complex inclusions and single MnS inclusions.This is connected with S content level in steel.Fracture toughness of railway steel increase obviously because of Al 2 O 3 covered by MnS around when S content is increase to about 70×10-6.It shows that,after Al 2 O 3 covering by MnS around,stresses around complex inclusion decrease rapidly till disappear when analyzed by tessellated stresses theory.That is the reason of fracture toughness rise.