RTRI REPORT April 2001

Recent Progress of Aluminothermic Welding for Rail

Yasuto FUKADA


  Aluminothermic welding (ATW) is widely used in the world. In the Japan railway company group, the application ratio of this method is approximately 40% every year. The reason why the ATW method is widely used are that the ATW equipment has good mobility and the total working time of that is shorter than that of the enclosed arc welding (EAW) method on site. And the operating skill required for ATW is less than that for EAW. This welding method was introduced into Japan from German in 1979. After that, the ATW technique has improved. This paper outlines the new technologies of the ATW recently introduced into Japan.


* Full papers of RTRI Report are written in Japanese.

Copyright (c) 2001 Railway Technical Research Institute