Wear behaviour investigation of wheel/rail interface in water lubrication and dry friction

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Wear behaviour investigation of wheel/rail interface in water lubrication and dry friction

Ozsarac, Ugur / Aslanlar, Salim

In this study, wet and dry sliding wear characteristics of train wheel-rail materials were investigated. Since, for effective and economical railway operation, important tribological issues must be addressed at the wheel/rail interface. For this reason, naturally gained rain water was used in experiments to obtain real conditions of wheel-rail contact in wet friction conditions.The conclusions derived from the research findings are summarized as follows: It was observed that friction coefficient decreased in wet sliding experiments, so smaller values have been calculated in wet friction conditions than that of dry friction conditions for wheel specimens: its value was decreased form 0.505 at 10N to 0.097 in dry and wet sliding conditions, respectively. Similarly at 40 N, coefficients of friction for rail samples were calculated as 0.494 and 0.081. Weight and volumetric loss values of rail materials were lower than that of wheel samples. Therefore, their wear rates were small; of course, this is a desired situation, because repair and maintenance of rails are more difficult than that of train wheels. In addition, rail corrugation affects the comfort of railway transportation negatively. An abrasive wear failure was observed in dry and wet friction conditions according to SEM micrographs of samples taken from wheel specimens in pin forms exposed to pin-on-disc wear testing. However, wear failure was more severe in dry sliding than that of wet sliding.