Abstracto

Characterization Of Transverse Crack And Crack Growth In A Railway Rail

A.Honarbakhsh Raoof, A.Hassan, R.Ravaee and A.Habibollah Zadeh

To ensure the rail transportations safety, evaluation of fatigue behavior of the rail steel is necessary. To study fatigue behavior of these steels the fracture mechanics was used. For doing that, analyzing the stresses exerted to the rail was fulfilled by finite element method (FEM). Aiming to find out the appropriate way of preventing a crack to grow up to its critical size in the rail under investigation during its lifetime, behavior of transverse head cracks was analyzed through applying damage tolerance concept. Critical crack size and crack growth characteristics for the rail have been determined by applying fracture mechanics. Residual service life has been calculated for defective segments of the rails and allowable crack size for different non-destructive testing intervals has then been determined. ï›™ 2006 Trade Science Inc. - INDIA