EXPRESS EVALUATION OF AN INDEX CHARACTERIZING THE CONTACT FATIGUE STRENGTH OF RAILROAD RAILS

摘要

This article examines the possibility of speeding up evaluations of the quality of rails and eliminating the need for lengthy tests on the test ring at the Russian Research Institute of Railroad Technology. It is a well-known fact that the quality of railroad rails is determined by their durability and reliability in service. These properties are expressed by the characteristics of safe operating life and projected time of service, the latter being cal-culated in millions of gross tons of freight transported on the rails. The given characteristics are determined in operational tests and on test tracks. The main factor that affects these indices is contact fatigue, i.e., the ability of rails to resist the for-mation and growth of transverse and longitudinal fatigue cracks. Rails in which such cracks form and grow during service must be promptly replaced. Up to 50,000 rails are replaced on Russian railroads each year for this reason, which points to the potential and need for further improving the rail-manufacturing technologies currently in use at metallurgical plants.