RTRI REPORT Nov. 2006
PAPERS

Investigation and Analysis on the Initiation of Rail Head Checks

Ying JIN,  Makoto ISHIDA,  Fusayoshi AOKI


  Head checks are one of rolling contact fatigue defects and consist of many small cracks located at the gauge face of high rails. Those cracks occur continuously along the longitudinal direction of rails and grow laterally against the longitudinal direction of rails. Also, head checks generally occur in mild circular curves and transition curves that are set at both ends of sharp circular curves. Some cracks of head checks often grow up to the appearance of rail spall which may cause rolling noise and lead to rail break though only on rate occasions. Then a lot of maintenance cost has been spent to refrain from rolling noise and avoid rail break. In order to clarify the initial and progressive conditions of the head checks, the authors measured the interacting forces between wheels and rails and the angle of attack, and carried out contact analysis using the measured data. As a result, some specific range of wear rate at the gauge face of high rails was identified with focusing on the wheel/rail contact condition of existing head checks.


* Full papers of RTRI Report are written in Japanese.

Copyright (c) 2006 Railway Technical Research Institute