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Title: Correlations between wear mechanisms and rail grinding operations

in a commercial railroad

Article Type: 2013 Joint Event on Tribology in Lyon

Keywords: Rail Grinding; Contact Fatigue; Corrugation; Contac Profile

Corresponding Author: Mrs. Paula Andrea Cuervo, Eng.

Corresponding Author's Institution: National University of Colombia

First Author: Paula Andrea Cuervo, Eng.

Order of Authors: Paula Andrea Cuervo, Eng.; Juan F Santa, PhD; Alejandro
Toro, PhD

Abstract: Rail grinding is a typical maintenance procedure for railways

in which an abrasive wheel is used to restore the rail profile while
eliminating defects such as corrugation, fatigue cracks and detachment
marks. In this work, the grinding procedures performed in 22 curves of a
commercial railway during 10 years were studied and classified to
understand the most important causes of damage. Periodical inspections
were done to identify the main wear mechanisms in the field and the
defects were classified into corrugation, fatigue and loss of profile.
The results showed that Corrugation was located preferentially on the low
rail and fatigue was observed preferentially in the high rail.
Cover Letter

Dear Editor

We are pleased to submit the paper entitled CORRELATIONS BETWEEN WEAR

MECHANISMS AND RAIL GRINDING OPERATIONS IN A COMMERCIAL RAILROAD for
publication in Tribology International. The paper deals with the grinding procedures
performed in 22 curves of a commercial railway during 10 years, which were studied and
classified to understand the most important causes of damage. Periodical inspections were
done to identify the main wear mechanisms in the field and the defects were classified into
corrugation, fatigue and loss of profile. The results of this work are believed to be useful in
the field, especially to rail maintenance processes and control wear rates in rails. This
article has not been published previously and is not under consideration elsewhere; It has
the full consent of all authors and if accepted will not be published elsewhere in the same
form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.
*Statement of Originality

The authors of the paper entitled CORRELATIONS BETWEEN WEAR MECHANISMS AND RAIL
GRINDING OPERATIONS IN A COMMERCIAL RAILROAD for publication in Tribology
International, state the originality of the results shown in this paper as part of our research.
*Highlights (for review)

 Corrugation was located preferentially on the low rail.

 The most important defects found in rails are head checks.
 The analysis of the type of profiles in the curves for the 0 to 200 days interval revealed that
70% of them are HRC rail profiles. For the interval between 200 and 400 days, 62 % of
profiles are CPF and for curves with grinding intervals between 400 and 600 days, 60% of
profiles are CPF.
 The number of RG operations can also be correlated with other parameters from the railway
as contact profile, curve radius and superelevation
*Manuscript
Click here to view linked References

1
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4 Correlations between wear mechanisms and rail grinding operations in a commercial railroad
5 1 1,2
P.A. Cuervo , J.F. Santa , A.Toro ,
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8 1) Tribology and Surfaces Group. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Medellín, Colombia.
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2) Grupo de Investigación Materiales Avanzados y Energía – MATyER. Instituto Tecnológico
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11 Metropolitano. Medellín, Colombia
12 pacuervo@unal.edu.co, jfsanta@gmail.com, aotoro@unal.edu.co
13
14
15 Rail grinding is a typical maintenance procedure for railways in which an abrasive wheel is used to restore the
16 rail profile while eliminating defects such as corrugation, fatigue cracks and detachment marks. In this work,
17
18 the grinding procedures performed in 22 curves of a commercial railway during 10 years were studied and
19 classified to understand the most important causes of damage. Periodical inspections were done to identify the
20
main wear mechanisms in the field and the defects were classified into corrugation, fatigue and loss of profile.
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22 The results showed that corrugation took place preferentially on the low rail while fatigue was observed
23 preferentially in the high rail.
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26 Keywords: Rail Grinding; Contact Fatigue; Corrugation; Contac Profile
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30 1. Introduction
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33 Rail maintenance procedures change both the sub-surface microstructure and the surface roughness, affect
34 the wear performance of the rail and preserve its profile. Rail grinding (RG) has been performed in commercial
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36 railways since the 1980’s to remove surface defects such as head checks and corrugations. It is a common
37 practice in railroad industry to maintain the profile and remove wear marks (fatigue cracks, head checks, etc.)
38
from the rail’s surface, so RG has been introduced in order to extend the service life of rails by removing the
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40 rolling contact fatigue layer on the running surface and preventing the shelling damage [1]. RG is currently
41 carried out by trains equipped with rotating grinding wheels driven by electrical motors, so the success of the
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operation depends on the characteristics and condition of the abrasive wheels, the applied pressure and the
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44 speed and angle between the grinding stones and the rail, among others.
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47 Since the artificial wear caused by rail grinding controls the actual wear rates of rails it is crucial to study the
48 grinding procedures in detail when high wear rates are systematically found in the field. With this in mind,
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several studies have focused on the parameters affecting the grinding procedures [1,2], optimal maintenance
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51 design and profile modification. For instance, in the work performed by deVries et al [3], the authors studied
52 preventive grinding to reduce maintenance costs by increasing the grinding frequency in tight curves and
53
optimizing profiles. They also increased grinding speed and reduced wear in the field. Satoh and Iwafuchi [4]
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55 concluded that rail grinding directly removes the surface layer with accumulated strain due to rolling contact
56 fatigue, while Zapata et al [5] studied the effect of velocity and grinding pressure on the artificial wear caused
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58 by the grinding wheels. They found that for higher pressures new cracks are induced in the rail’s surface, and a
59 white layer is formed. Taubertet al [6] studied high-speed grinding with no traffic interruption and found that
60 removing frequently a thin, plastically deformed layer increases the productivity during rail grinding. The results
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4 of these investigations show that potentially harmful features such as micro cracks or heavily deformed regions
5 at the surface of the rail can be removed by an adequate rail grinding practice. However, if new defects are
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7 induced during a poorly performed grinding operation, the wear rates can significantly increase and the overall
8 effect of the procedure on the estimated lifetime of the rail can be negative.
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11 Although many studies have been developed to increase productivity of rail grinding in the field, a fundamental
12 understanding of the wear mechanisms acting on the rails is required to optimize rail grinding as a tool to
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14 increase productivity in a railway system. In this work, the grinding procedures performed to the rails were
15 studied and classified to understand the most important causes of damage and to correlate the rail grinding
16 events with the operation conditions of the railway system.
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19 2. Experimental
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22 The grinding procedures performed during 10 years to the rails in 22 curves of a commercial line were studied
23 and classified to understand the most important causes of damage. The defects were classified into
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25 corrugation, fatigue and loss of profile. Although there are other reasons to perform grinding operations such
26 as the presence of braking marks, welded joints, etc. only wear-related issues were taken into account in this
27 analysis. The term fatigue includes fatigue detachments (spalling) and head checks. Corrugation relates to
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29 undulatory wear, noise and vibrations, and loss of profile includes plastic deformation, reprofiling marks and
30 negative geometry caused by welding.
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33 The analysis included the classification of defects for every curve and for low and high rail. The mean time
34 between rail grinding for every curve was also evaluated. Field inspections were performed during the last 2
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years of the timeframe studied to identify the most common defects found in the railway. Several curve
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37 parameters (curve radius, superelevation, and type of profile) were also evaluated to understand their effect on
38 rail grinding procedures.
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41 In the field, the decision to perform rail grinding is usually based on the magnitude of fatigue damage, which is
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determined after visual examination. However, in order to decide when to perform rail grinding due to
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44 excessive corrugation, quantitative measurements can be made with the aid of the Corrugation Analysis Trolley
45 (CAT). In this work, CAT analysis was done to decide about rail grinding and two groups of parameters were
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analyzed, namely: 1. Roughness amplitude parameters such as average roughness (Ra) and Root-mean-
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48 square (RMS) displacement, and 2. The proportion of the rail profile that lies outside the band specified by an
49 exceedence level set with respect to the CAT profile [7, 8, 9]. In this article the CAT analysis is not shown.
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52 The grinding procedures were performed in the field using a Harsco Track Technologies TG8 rail grinding
53 machine equipped with 8 heads (4 for each rail) and several grinding patterns available. Each grinding wheel
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55 can be adjusted to an attack angle between +45° and-40° and the travel velocity can be varied between 1.6
56 and 13 km/h.
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59 3. Results and discussion
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4 Figure 1 presents typical examples of the defects found in the field inspections. Figure 1a shows fatigue
5 cracks - known in the literature as head checks (1) - and spalling marks (2)[2],[3]. Figure 1b shows tongue
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7 lipping, which is responsible for loss of profile. Figure 1c shows undulatory wear and figure 3d displays
8 negative geometry in a welded junction. Generally speaking, the corrugation was observed preferentially on
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low rails while head checks were found on the high rail in tight curves, i.e. those with higher wear rates.
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12 By considering both high and low rails the most important defects found in the field are head checks. In fact,
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14 the rail grinding maintenance operations of the railroad are determined by the detectionof these defectsby
15 visual inspection. If the head checks are not ground intime they coalesce and lead to large detachments (see
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17 Error! Reference source not found.a). After grinding, the rail’s roughness in the contact zone is high (Ra=
18 5-6 µm) but after circa two weeks it is reduced to Ra= 1.5 µm, meaning that the high stresses in the surface
19
deform plastically the rail and create the driving force for fatigue cracks to continue growing if they are not
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21 properly removed during the grinding operations.
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24 Figure 1. Defects found in the field inspections
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26 Figure 2a shows the statistics of grinding procedures performed in the in the 22 curves of the line during 10
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28 years arranged by the main cause for reprofiling, and Figure 2b shows the percentage of the total grinding
29 operations for the high and low rail. It can be seen that grinding the high rail is the most frequent operation in
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the field. In most of the cases the maintenance tasks are performed because fatigue marks appear, whereas
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32 corrugation is the most important defect found in the field for the low rail. In all cases, fatigue is located
33 preferentially on the high rail (see Figure 2c) and corrugation appeared preferentially on the low rail (see
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35 Figure 2d). It is worth noticing at this point that grinding the high rail because of fatigue or the low rail because
36 of corrugation will also require grinding the other rail. In this case, reprofiling (grinding operations to recover
37 rail’s profile) is performed. Moreover, from the results described in Figure 2 it can be concluded that Rolling
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39 Contact Fatigue (RCF) is the most important issue for the line.
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Figure 2. Details of grinding operations performed in the field during the last 10 years.
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44 In Figure 3, the curves with the highest number of grinding procedures are shown as well as the corresponding
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main cause of damage. It can be seen that, despite fatigue is the most relevant issue for the line, corrugation
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47 plays an important role in several curves. In fact, the two curves with the highest number of grinding
48 procedures, accounting for 9% of the total, are ground because of corrugation.
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51 Figure 3. Classification of rail grinding procedures per main cause for several curves
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54 Figure 4 shows the analysis performed to identify the mean interval between rail grinding operations for low
55 and high rail in several curves. The intervals are classified in three groups, namely from 0 to 200 days, 200 to
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400 days and 400 to 600 days. The cumulated traffic per year in the line is 6 MTon. Since 24% of the studied
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58 curves were ground on average every 200 days (3.3 MTon) it can be said that the grinding intervals are
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4 unusually short when compared with those found in the literature [3, 4, 10, 11]. Additionally, in the most critical
5 curves the rail grinding is performed every 100 days (1.6 MTon).
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8 The former ordering in intervals is also useful for classifying the damage on the curves depending on the
9
number of days required to perform RG as severe (shorter than 200 days), medium (from 200 to 400 days),
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11 and mild (higher than 400 days).The analysis of the type of profiles in the curves for the 0 to 200 days interval
12 revealed that 70% of them are HRC rail profiles. For the interval between 200 and 400 days, 62 % of profiles
13
14 are CPF and for curves with grinding intervals between 400 and 600 days, 60% of profiles are CPF. This
15 behavior reveals that the type of rail profile is a very important issue for the line, so profile optimization is
16 recommendable especially for tight curves (those with RG intervals lower than 200 days).
17
18
19 Figure 4.Number of grinding operations in curves and intervals between grinding operations
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22 Since the type of profile was found to be an important issue, the number of grinding procedures performed was
23 plotted against the type of profile for the low and the high rail and the results are shown in Figure 5 and Figure
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25 6 respectively.
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From Figure 5 it can be concluded that there is a direct correlation between the CPF profiles and the number
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29 of RG operations performed in the field. Additionally, for curves 1, 3 and 9 undulatory wear is a concern. The
30 curves were then classified as a function of the number of RG operations caused by undulatory wear as
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32 follows: severe undulatory wear (more than 17 RG operations), medium undulatory wear (from 8 to 14 RG
33 operations) and mild undulatory wear (less than 8 RG operations). Figure 6 shows that in most of HRC profiles,
34 fatigue is the most important damaging mechanism found in the field. Moreover, the number of RG operations
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36 caused by fatigue (13-17) in several curves is very similar meaning that the behavior represents very well the
37 current state of the line. From Figure 5 and Figure 6, the curve 1 can be classified as the most problematical
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curve.
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41 Figure 5.Number of grinding operations in curves for low rails
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44 Figure 6.Number of grinding operations in curves for high rails
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47 The number of RG operations can also be correlated with other parameters from the railway. Figure 7a shows
48 the number of RG operations related to fatigue against the rail’s superelevation. In curves with higher rail
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superelevation the number of RG operations is also higher. Additionally, in Figure 7b it is clear that for curves
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51 with smaller radius the number of RG operations is also higher. However, there are several curves with low
52 number of RG operations and tight radius. This can be explained by others parameters such as train speed
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which changes the lateral forces causing plastic deformation on the rail’s surface.
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56 a) Number of grinding operations against rail b) Number of grinding operations against curve
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58 superelevation radius
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60 Figure 7. Correlations of number of grinding operations with railway parameters
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5 After analyzing the data available, a general scheme showing the main correlations between wear
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7 mechanisms and design parameters such as contact profile, curvature radius and superelevation is shown in
8 Figure 9. Again, it can be seen that fatigue is predominant in high rails while corrugation is the most important
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issue in low rails.
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12 Figure 8. Correlations between grinding processes and wear mechanisms
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16 4. CONCLUSIONS
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19 After analysis of reprofiling data from 10 years of inspections on a commercial railroad it was determined that
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fatigue is the major issue and head checks, spalling marks and valleys in welds are the most relevant defects
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22 in both high and low rails.
23
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25 There is a good correlation among the type of damage, the number of RG operations, the rail’s profile, the
26 curve radius and curve´s superelevation. Generally speaking, the number of RG operations increased with
27 superelevation and decreased with curve’s radius.
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30 The analyzed railroad is operating under a severe tribological condition since the mean interval between
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grinding procedures in the field is 2 to 3 times smaller than the typical values found in the literature for similar
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33 railroads. Most rail grinding operations are performed in high rails, being 72% of them due to fatigue. On the
34 other hand, in low rails 51% of the rail grinding tasks are performed because of corrugation and fatigue
35
damage is not significant.
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38 5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
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41 The authors thank Metro de Medellín for technical support. Financial support provided by Colciencias - Metro
42 de Medellin project No. 748 - 2011 is also acknowledged.
43
44
45 6. REFERENCES
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47
[1] Schoech W. Rolling contact fatigue mitigation by grinding. Available online
48
49 http://www.speno.ch/pdf/Railtech2007_1-Rolling%20Contact%20Fatigue%20final_1.pdf
50 [2] Grassie S.L, Lewis R, Olofsson U. Maintenance of the wheel rail interface, in Wheel-rail interface
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handbook. Wood head.CRC Press. 2009
52
53 [3] Railway C. P, Sroba P, &Magel E. Preventive Grinding Moves into the 21 st Century on Canadian Pacific
54 Railway.
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56 [4] Satoh Y, Iwafuchi K. Effect of rail grinding on rolling contact fatigue in railway rail used in conventional line in
57 Japan. Wear 265 (2008) 1342-1348.
58 [5] Zapata D, Santa J.F, Sánchez J.C, González J.C, Toro A. Effect of Rail Grinding Conditions on Subsurface
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60 Microstructure and Surface Roughness of Fatigued Rails. First International Brazilian Conference on Tribology,
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4 November 24th to 26th, 2010, Rio de Janeiro.
5 [6] Taubert M. High Speed Grinding Preventative Rail Care. Arema 2009.
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7 [7] Rail Measurement Ltd Rail Measurement CAT User Guide issue 9.50. 4 June 2009. Rail Measurement
8 Corrugation Analysis Trolley User Guide issue 9.50. Copyright © 2009 Rail Measurement Ltd.
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[8] Jin X, Wen Z, Wang K and Zhang W. Effect of a scratch on curved rail on initiation and evolution of rail
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11 corrugation.
12 [9] Grassie S.L, Kalousek J. Rail Corrugation: Characteristics, Causes and Treatments, IMechE 207(F) (1993).
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14 [10] Burstow M.C, Fletcher D. I, Frankli F.J, Kapoor A. Management and understanding of rolling contact
15 fatigue: WP1 mechanisms of crack initiation: final report. Rail Safety and Standards Board; 2008.
16 [11] Magel E, Kalousek J. The application of contact mechanics to rail profile design and rail grinding. Wear
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18 253 (2002) 308–316
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Figure 1a
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Figure 2d
Figure 3
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Figure 8