Professional Documents
Culture Documents
D. F. CANNON
1
, K. - O. EDEL
2
, S. L. GRASSI E
3
and K. SAWLEY
4
1
Derbyshire, UK,
2
Fachhochschule Brandenburg, Germany,
3
Wedemark, Germany,
4
National Research Council, Centre for Surface Transportation
Technology, Ottowa, Ontario, KIV1S2, Canada
Received in final form 2 June 2003
ABSTRACT For about 150 years, the steel rail has been at the very heart of the worlds railway systems.
The rail works in a harsh environment and, as part of the track structure, it has little redun-
dancy; thus, its failure may lead to catastrophic derailment of vehicles, the consequences
of which can include death, injury, costs and loss of public confidence. These can have
devastating and long-lasting effects on the industry. Despite the advances being made in
railway permanent way engineering, inspection and rail-making technology, continually
increasing service demands have resulted in rail failure continuing to be a substantial eco-
nomic burden and a threat to the safe operation of virtually every railway in the world.
This paper presents an overview of rail defects and their consequences from the earliest
days of railways to the present day.
Keywords defects; grinding; inspection; rail; RCF
I NT RODUCT I ON
For about 150 years, the steel rail has been at the very
heart of the worlds railway systems. Its main functions
are to transmit wheel forces to the track bed and, together
with the tread and flange of the wheel, to guide vehicles.
The environment in which the rail works is harsh and the
forces endured by it are complex and variable. Wheelrail
contact conditions can result in severe wear, the environ-
ment may lead to corrosion and the rail may even be sub-
jected to mechanical and thermal abuse during installation
and track maintenance operations. The rail must also be
machinable, weldable and, because of the large tonnages
continually consumed, affordable. By and large the steel
rail has given good service; however, like many metallic
components that are subjected to cyclic (repeated) load-
ing, the rail is susceptible to metal fatigue and this can
lead to its partial or complete failure. As a structural unit
within the track construction, the rail has very little re-
dundancy; consequently, its failure demands immediate
rectification. At worst it may result in catastrophic derail-
ment of vehicles. The consequences of such derailments
in terms of death, injury, cost and public confidence can
be devastating and long lasting.
Fatigue failure develops in three basic phases; first a fa-
tigue crack initiates, it then grows in size, and, in the ab-
sence of control, the rail finally breaks (Fig. 1). The first
Correspondence: Dr. K. Sawley. E-mail: Kevin sawley@ttci.aar.com
two phases of fatigue failure require the accumulation of
loading cycles over a period of time. It is this period of
crack growth that is used by railway engineers to control
and contain the problem within limits that are considered
to be reasonable. This control process involves regular
rail inspection and the implementation of prescribed ac-
tions whenfatigue cracks andother defects are found. This
control process is often known as rail defect management
(RDM).
Despite many advances in railway permanent way en-
gineering, inspection and rail-making technology, con-
tinually increasing service demands have resulted in
rail fatigue failure remaining a substantial economic
burden and a threat to the safe operation of virtu-
ally every railway of the world. The universal nature
of the problem and its cost, probably around C
=
2 bil-
lion per year in the European Union alone, is indi-
cated by the decision of the International Union of
Railways (UIC) to make Rail Defect Management its
first World Joint Research Project.
1
This paper presents
an overview of rail defects and their consequences
from the earliest days of railways to the present day.
RAI L S, ST RE SSE S, RAI L FAI L URE AND COST S
The early days
The first metal rails, for example, as used in English
coalmines and tramways in the 18th century, were made
of cast iron. This material was brittle and was unable to
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866 D. F. CANNON et al.
Fig. 1 Tache ovale or kidney rail failure.
redistribute loads through plastic deformation. With
hindsight, it is not surprising to find that rail failures were
common. Richard Trevithick experienced such rail fail-
ures with his first steam engine in the iron works of South
Wales and spectacularly, in 1808, a rail fractured during
the public demonstration in London of his locomotive
Catch me who can.
2
The rail failure caused the locomo-
tive to derail and, at least for the time being, presentations
of the new technology were ended.
3
Wear was also a problem. For example, it is believed that
George Stephenson increased the Killingworth colliery
gauge of 4 feet 8 inches by a 1/2 inch to reduce friction
between wheel flange and the rail, thus creating the stan-
dard track gauge of today (1435 mm).
4
In the interests
of reducing wear, the operating speed of the first German
railway, between N urnberg and F urth, was reduced from
the demonstration speed of 40 kmh
1
to 24 kmh
1
.
4
The
problem of wear is also clearly shown by the continuous
demand to increase the strength of rails.
Longitudinal woodenbeams cappedwithironstrips were
used as a cheap alternative to the iron rail in some early
19th century rail systems, for example, between Leipzig
and Wurzen in Germany and widely in North America.
This composite rail might almost be considered as the first
application of rail head hardening, nowcommonly used in
rail manufacture. The iron strips were about 25 mm thick
and they tried to bend as a result of deformation induced
by wheelrail contact stresses. The early nail fastenings,
later replaced by bolts, were unable to resist the bending
forces and the bent strips could become detached.
5
These
were known as snakeheads in North America, where they
caused frequent damage to equipment and passengers.
6
The advent and development of the steel rail
The steel rail became a practical proposition by the mid-
19th century. Bessemer, open hearth and other steel-
making processes made relatively high tonnage produc-
tion of steel possible, and by the turn of the century 15 m
Fig. 2 Wheelrail forces (taken from Ref. [14]).
lengths of rail were commonly rolled. In North America
early attempts at a composite, cheap rail (iron web and
base and steel head) soon gave way to adoption of the
complete steel rail. With the exception of the early bull
head rail, which continued to find favour in UK until the
mid 20th century, the flat-bottom or Tee-section rail, in
various sizes, has been almost universal for over a century
(see Fig. 2).
The performance of the steel rail, in particular its
strength and ductility, is much superior to the cast iron
rail and its advent opened the door to the rapid develop-
ment of railways throughout the world. The concept of a
steel rail supported by transverse beams, knownas sleepers
or cross-ties, set in stone ballast, remains the principle of
classic track design today even though ballastless track and
other new track forms are being used and developed.
Most of todays rail steels have basic carbon/manganese
compositions with pearlitic microstructures possibly with
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RAI L DEFECTS: AN OVERVI EW 867
Table 1 Chemical composition of Grade 260 Rail Steel
7
Chemical element (Mass %) ppm (max)
C Si Mn P (max) S Cr Al (max) V (max) N (max) O H
0.60/0.82 0.13/0.60 0.65/1.25 0.030 0.008/0.030 <0.15 0.004 0.030 0.008 20 3.0
Table 2 Mechanical properties of Grade 260 Rail Steel
7
Minimum ultimate Minimum Center line running
tensile strength (MPa) elongation (%) surface hardness (HBW)
880 10 260/300
some ferrite. The draft European Rail Standard grade 260
steel is typical of the steels used in many of the worlds
rail systems.
7
Its composition and basic material prop-
erties are shown in Tables 1 and 2. The microstructure
of this steel is described as pearlitic with possibly some
limited grain boundary ferrite. No martensite, bainite or
grain-boundary cementite is permitted. The draft Euro-
pean Standard also provides some minimumrequirements
for other properties that have a bearing on rail failure. For
grade 260 steel these are as follows.
Fracture toughness. The mean minimum toughness (K
Ic
)
should be 29 MPa m
1/2
at 20
C. The fracture tough-
ness of rail steels has a temperature and loading rate de-
pendency, and in the latter case the dependency may be
weak or strong.
812
Fatigue crack growth rates. The maximum fatigue crack
growth rates, measured in the head at room temperature
and at a ratio of minimumto maximumload of 0.5, should
be 17 m Gc
1
and 55 m Gc
1
at K values of 10 and
13.5 Mpa m
1/2
respectively.
Fatigue strength. The minimum fatigue resistance of rail
head material, determined in fully reversed axial loading
of small cylindrical test pieces, should be 0.000135 total
strain amplitude of 5 million cycles.
Residual stresses. The maximum longitudinal, tensile
residual stress in the rail foot, formed during manufac-
ture, should be less than 250 MPa.
Other than hardness, there are no requirements for wear
resistance. These properties indicate that todays typical
rail steel is strong and resistant to wear but its ductility is
limitedandat most operating temperatures it will fracture,
in the presence of a sharp tipped discontinuity, such as a
fatigue crack, in a brittle cleavage mode.
The draft European Rail Standard provides require-
ments for a number of other rail steels including some
with higher wear resistance achieved either by alloying
and/or heat treatment.
To meet todays stringent requirements, steel is normally
made by the basic oxygen process with vacuum degassing
and it is continuously cast. Electric-arc steel making and
secondary ladle arc refining may also be used. Great care
is taken to minimize the occurrence of atomic hydrogen
in the hot bloom, as this may lead to the formation of
shatter cracks in the rail head and the later formation of
the kidney rail failures (see Fig. 1). Slow bloom cool-
ing and isothermal treatment processes are also used to
ensure low hydrogen content. Rail rolling processes (e.g.,
the Bartscherer method) have beendeveloped to minimize
rolling flaws, and two-stage roller straightening is used to
maximize straightness and flatness, while minimizing lon-
gitudinal residual stresses.
For the future, bainitic steels showpromise of greater re-
sistance to rolling contact fatigue (RCF) damage, and im-
provements in joining processes, such as alumino-thermic
welds, are likely.
13
The basic rail section looks set to stay,
withlinear masses of around6070kgm
1
beingsufficient
for most applications. However, there may be more atten-
tion to the definition and accuracy of dimensions control-
ling the transverse shape of the rail running surface as this
affects the magnitude of contact stresses in the early days
of rail use, and hence RCF.
Rail stresses
There are many stresses that operate in a rail and can
influence rail defects and rail failure. Bending and shear
stresses arise principally fromthe gross vehicle load. Max-
imum static axle loads in Europe range from about 21 to
25 t but in the USA they routinely reach almost 30 t and
many coal trains running out of the Powder River Basin
have axle loads of about 32.4 t. In Australia axle loads of
about 37 t have been reported on iron-ore vehicles. All
these axle loads are nominal values, assuming that vehi-
cles are uniformly loaded. This need not be the case. Dy-
namic effects can significantly increase these static loads.
Conversely, if dynamic effects can be reduced, and loads
distributed more evenly, greater static loads can be car-
ried. As well as bending and shear stresses, the rail is also
subjected to contact stresses, thermal stresses and residual
stresses.
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868 D. F. CANNON et al.
Fig. 3 Head bending stress variation with wheel position (taken
from Ref. [14]).
Bending and shear stresses
As the wheel passes over a point in the rail, the forces it
applies produce vertical and lateral bending stresses and
shear stresses in the rail (Fig. 2).
14
While the lateral bend-
ing stresses contribute to rail failure, the vertical bending
stresses dominate. These are predominantly compressive
in the rail head and tensile in the rail base, although rail
uplift on either side of the wheel load position leads to a
reversal of stress (Fig. 3). By design the rail shape is such
that rail head wear has little effect on stresses in the rail
base. This is because, although wear reduces the rail sec-
ond moment of area, it also moves the rail neutral axis
down in the rail. In contrast, wear does lead to a signifi-
cant increase in the mainly compressive head stresses. The
shear stresses produced in the rail are the main cause of
failures at boltholes machined in the rail web to join rails.
(On most railways, continuously welded rail has been in-
troduced to reduce numbers of boltholes.)
Analytical methods to calculate bending and shear stress
generally assume that the rail is supportedona continuous,
elastic foundation of constant modulus; thus the effect of
discrete supports, i.e., sleepers, is not taken directly into
account. (Sleeper spacing has an indirect effect through
its effect on elastic foundation modulus.) This is a rea-
sonably good approximation. Finite-element methods are
also available to calculate stress.
Wheelrail contact stresses
Contact stresses between the wheel and rail are very high.
For example, the maximum normal stress can routinely
reach 1500 MPa compressive, while stresses in excess of
4000 MPa can arise from poorly conforming wheels and
rails. These stresses can usually be reasonably predicted
from Hertzian analysis, although more accurate analysis
methods are available that may indicate multipoint contact
especially in curving conditions (see Fig. 4).
15
Forces that
contribute to contact stresses are wheel load, and forces
Fig. 4 Normal contact pressure distributions, (a) Hertzian (b)
non-Hertzian (taken from Ref. [15]).
in the plane of the wheelrail contact area, which arise
from traction, braking and steering. The steering forces,
and the way they are generated, are complex, and have
components along and across the rail as well as a spin mo-
ment about an axis normal to the contact surface. These
in-plane forces have a significant influence on RCF.
Thermal stresses
To eliminate problems with bolted rail joints, most mod-
ern railways use rails that are welded together, known as
continuously welded rail. This has produced its own prob-
lems. The rail/sleeper system behaves very much like a
long slender column, and in compression it can buckle,
giving a high risk of derailment. For this reason, rails are
welded under conditions to simulate nominally high am-
bient temperatures, so that they are in tension for most of
the year. Compression only occurs in hot summer months
when the constrained rails would, if they could, thermally
expand. This method of installing rails reduces the risk of
buckling, but increases the risk of sudden brittle rail fail-
ure, especially in winter months when temperatures are
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RAI L DEFECTS: AN OVERVI EW 869
low and thermally induced tensile forces are highest. This
increases the need for non-destructive inspection to de-
tect defects. Thermally induced longitudinal stresses can
also occur in rails joined by bolts and fishplates (joint bars)
if joints are not well maintained.
Residual stresses
Residual stresses are introduced in the rail during manu-
facturing and straightening processes. These stresses are
subsequently modified by plastic deformations occurring
in the wheelrail contact zone. Residual stresses tend to
be tensile in the centre of the rail head, where they can
contribute to defect initiation and growth. The measure-
ment of residual stresses is not easy. Traditional destruc-
tive methods (e.g., strain gauge and sectioning, Meier
rods etc.) are relatively coarse and unsuitable when steep
stress gradients and multiaxial stresses are present. Non-
destructive methods, suchas ultrasonics andneutronbeam
diffraction have been used with mixed results.
16,17
Dynamic effects
Static forces and rail stresses are increased significantly by
track-top irregularities and discontinuities in the rails and
in the wheels. For example, joints and welds in rails can be
dipped when they are produced or dips may form due to
deformation and/or wear. These irregularities create high
dynamic forces, especially at high speeds. Similarly, high
dynamic forces can arise from wheels that have flat spots
or are out-of-round. Amajor cause of such irregularities is
wheel slide, caused when the wheel stops rotating because
Fig. 5 Surface spalling of the rail surface caused by wheelburn.
of braking demand that exceeds the available wheelrail
friction.
Dynamic forces can significantly reduce the critical size
of fatigue cracks. If they occur sufficiently frequently, they
can increase fatigue crack growth rates. Wheel-impact de-
tectors are therefore used in many countries. In North
America approximately 50 wheel-impact detectors were
in operation at the end of 2002. Approximately 10 other
systems able to measure vertical and lateral wheel forces
were expected to be operational to detect poorly perform-
ing bogies that cause high lateral forces. The Association
of American Railroads interchange rules condemn a wheel
if a force of about 400 kN is detected; for a typical-loaded
freight wagon this represents a dynamic force increment
of about 2.7.
Types of modern rail failure
Todays rail failures can be divided into three broad groups
as follows.
r
Those originating fromrail manufacturing defects a clas-
sic example of this is the tache ovale or kidney defect that
usually originates from a hydrogen shatter crack in the rail
head (Fig. 1).
r
Those originating from defects or damage caused by inap-
propriate handling, installation and use. For example, the
wheelburn defect (Fig. 5) is caused by spinning wheels.
r
Those caused by the exhaustion of the rail steels inher-
ent resistance to fatigue damage. Many forms of RCF are
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870 D. F. CANNON et al.
Fig. 6 Surface gauge corner head checks.
Fig. 7 Transverse crack originating at head checks.
within this group, for example head checking (Figs 6 and
7) and squats (Fig. 8).
Rail failures caused by manufacturing defects have been,
and are being, addressed through improvements in steel-
and rail-making technology. On the other hand reduction
of rail failures caused by abuse lies in the hands of the
railways and railway service industries. Defects and rail
failures in these two groups have traditionally been the
major target of RDM(see the section Rail defect manage-
ment). Over the last 20 years or so, rail failures in the third
group have been increasing, especially failures involving
RCF. Defects and rail failures in the third group can only
be effectively reduced by improvements in material prop-
erties, changes in the design, build and maintenance of
the track and vehicles or changes in the conditions of
operation.
Rolling contact fatigue
The October 2000 derailment at Hatfield inUK, resulting
from head checking, provides an outstanding example of
the possible consequences of RCF. RCF is likely to be
a major future concern as business demands for higher
speed, higher axle loads, higher traffic density and higher
tractive forces increase.
Head checks, gauge-corner cracks and squats are all
names for surface-initiated RCF defects. They are caused
by a combination of high normal and tangential stresses
between the wheel and rail, which cause severe shearing of
the surface layer of the rail and either fatigue or exhaus-
tion of ductility of the material. The microscopic crack
produced propagates through the heavily deformed (and
orthotropic) surface layers of steel at a shallow angle to
the rail running surface (about 10