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ROLLING CONTACT FATIGUE AND ITS MANAGEMENT THROUGH

RAIL GRINDING

Pradeep Kumar Garg
*

Chief Engineer, Central Railway, Mumbai

Synopsis

Rolling contact fatigue develops on the rails due to high stresses imparted by the running wheels. Many
factors contribute to high stresses on the rails. Small contact patch between rail and wheel produces high contact
stresses which is one of the major contributor for initialization and growth of RCF. RCF manifests on the surface of
the rail in the form of head checks, squats, wheel burns, corrugations, spalling and shelling etc. If damage is not
timely tackled, it increases and will penetrate deeper into the rails or welds, ultimately leading to their failures. Rail
Grinding is done to re-profile the rail head keeping in view the profiles of the wheels running in the system so as to
increase the contact patch area, thereby reducing contact stresses.

The management of RCF on rails requires different strategies ranging from better rail steels, lubrication,
better designs of bogies and better track maintenance strategies including rail grinding. Rail grinding has emerged as
the important track maintenance technology to reduce the damage of the rails and wheels, thereby increasing their
lives significantly. With the reduced failures the reliability of operations as well as the safety performance improves.
This becomes more pertinent in context of high speed operations.

The paper highlights the causes of RCF development and the various forms in which RCF manifests itself on
the rail surface. The target rail profiles and strategy of rail grinding adopted on Indian Railways has also been briefly
discussed.

Keywords:
Contact stresses, Rolling Contact Fatigue, Ratcheting, Shelling, Squats, Preventive Gradual Grinding, Hollow Wheel,
Rail Life, Wheel Life.

1.0 Introduction

Rolling contact fatigue is the damage taking place on the surface of the rail in various forms due to millions of
intense wheel-rail contact cycles that repeatedly overstress the surface or subsurface material. RCF initiates on the
surface or near to the surface of the rail and propagates with the passing wheels. RCF reduces the life of the rails
and wheels and results in increased cost of maintenance. Rail is the costliest asset on a railway system and any
reduction in rail life affects the unit cost of transportation appreciably.

Increasing axle loads and speeds initiate RCF rapidly on the rails, thereby enhancing the maintenance
requirements. But due to increased traffic, the maintenance windows are shrinking. These contradictory demands are
a challenge to track maintenance engineers and they need to adopt improved maintenance practices to reduce the
damage on rails.The damage can be reduced by various means such as by increasing the strength of the rails,
improving rail metullargy etc. Rail grinding has emerged as the most effective track maintenance tool to reduce RCF.
With six decades of experience of grinding the rails, infrastructure engineers have been able to increase the axle
loads and speeds of the trains keeping RCF under control. Rail grinding is adopted on heavy haul routes as well as
on high speed routes successfully.

2.0 Development of Rolling Contact Fatigue and its manifestation

The damage on the surface of the rail is a function of the localised contact stresses and the yield strength of
the rails. The magnitude of the contact stresses depends upon the area of contact patch between rails and wheels.
The contact patch is surprisingly small with corresponding high contact stresses. Typically, contact is made over a
quasi-elliptical contact patch having area of contact is about 1cm
2
, through which the whole load of the wheel is
transferred to the rail.


Fig. 1: Elliptical Contact patch between wheel and rail

The contact patch can be severely reduced under some uncontrolled wheel/rail contact conditions.The
contact stresses on the rail-wheel contact locations will be of high magnitude resulting in development of rolling
contact fatigue damage on the surface/sub-surface of the rail in various forms. The reasons of the RCF on rails (and
wheels) can be understood by Shake down diagram (Fig.2).


Fig. 2 : Shakedown Diagram

Fig. 2 is a plot of Po/K Vs T/N where Po is the normal contact stress, K is the shear strength of rail steel, T is
the surface traction and N is the normal force. The plastic shake down limit is shown in the diagram. So long as the
point lies in the region below the line marked by A and C on the diagram, there will be no damage to the rail. But a
point outside will result in plastic crack developing on rail. The damage can be reduced by minimizing normal contact
stresses, minimizing tractions by reducing available adhesion or by using higher strength of materials. Most of the
wheels are carried without damage but some of them will plastically deform the rail in the direction of applied traction.
Each increment ratchets the surface layer until the ductility of the steel is exhausted. Eventually a crack is generated
in the rail. This is depicted in Fig. 3.



Fig. 3: Ratcheting and Crack Formation

Contact stresses can be reduced by having better rail wheel contact through engineered profiles,material
strength can be increased by improving rail metallurgy and traction coefficient can be reduced by using friction
modifiers.
The various forms in which rolling contact fatigue shows up on the rail surface are explained below.

2.1 Head checks

Head checks develop on outer rail of the shallow curves in the form of a series of cracks as shown in Fig. 4
and present the biggest problem in rails. These can also develop on sharp curves having limited or no wear. They
result from accumulation of plastic strain increments, which eventually exhausts the ductility of the surface material,
at which point cracks can initiate. The critical conditions for this to occur are high load and friction.

These head checks have been found extensively on straight track also on Indian Railways due to hunting.
Bad weld geometry and closely conformal rail wheel contacts have been the cause of extensive hunting on straight
track on Indian Railways. The head checks will grow with passage of traffic and their pitch will also reduce. The
cracks not only grow on the surface but also penetrate deeper into the rail. It is, therefore, necessary to eliminate
these head checks at the initial stages of their development.















Fig.4 : HEAD CHECKS IN RAIL

2.2 Spalling

Spalling occurs in the form of chipping-off of metal from the rail gauge corner or from surface of the rail as
shown in Fig. 5. The uncontrolled growth of head checks brings them closer resulting in joining of the cracks and


material flakes coming out of the rail head. These may grow in transverse flaw with the passage of the traffic,
endangering the integrity of the rail.



Fig. 5 : SPALLING IN RAIL
2.3 Shelling

Shelling and spalling are similar type of defects, the difference being in their initiation. While spalling is a
surface phenomena, shelling is a sub-surface initiated defect. The crack starts developing below the rail surface due
to inclusions coupled with heavy stresses, and the crack grows towards the head, chipping-off of the material as
shown in Fig. 7.



Fig.7 : SHELLING IN RAILS

2.4 Wheel burns

Wheel burns take place on the surface of the rail due to inadequate traction to haul the train load. These can
commonly occur on steep gradients, on approach of signals etc. where more hauling power is required to start the
train. One of the characteristics of these defects is that they will occur simultaneously on both the rails opposite to
each other. These are shown in Fig. 8.



Fig.8 : WHEEL BURNS IN RAIL

2.5 Squats

Squats occur on tangent track and in shallow curves on the rolling surface of the rail head and are
characterized by dark spots on the rail as shown in Fig.9. Squats are surface initiated rolling contact fatigue defects
and may propagate transversely across the rail. They can initiate as a result of ratcheting and fluid pressurization
and also from white etching layers resulting from modification of the microstructure of the rail surface material from
perlite to martensite. Ultrasonic inspection of these defects is difficult since the transverse defect is shielded by the
shallow horizontal crack.



Fig.9 : SQUATS IN RAIL

2.6 Corrugations

Corrugation is a periodic irregularity on the rail surface on one or both rails. These may be initiated by rail
head irregularities caused by rail manufacturing, rail joints, welds or contact fatigue head defects. Higher axle loads
results in an increased growth rate of corrugations.

Bad track geometry, misaligned welds, cupped welds etc. are potential spots for development of the above
defects. On Indian Railways, the geometry of welds especially AT welds is not up to the mark and has been found to
be the major cause for the development of defects due to hunting, squats and corrugations. Higher axle loads will
accelerate the growth of these defects exponentially, other factors remaining the same. It has been observed that
some of these defects are developing due to bad welds also. Hunting on straight track on account of misaligned
welds and flatter rail radius result in cyclic head checks development and cyclic wear of rails.

3.0 MANAGEMENT OF RCF

The management of RCF should focus on reduction in initiation as well as growth of RCF. The damage of
rails due to rolling contact fatigue can be managed by adopting the following strategies in suitable combinations.

3.1 Using steels of high hardness Rail hardness on Indian Railways is 260 BHN. By using high hardness rails,
the damage on the rail surface will be delayed and will also come down. This is the trend on other Railway systems
where rails having 340 to 380 BHN and even 400 BHN are in use for heavy haul routes. However, due to low wear on
harder steel, the defects will not be removed by natural wear and it is necessary to carry-out rail grinding to give
artificial wear to rails. The harder rail will generally require profile correction soon after installation to a worn,
conformal profile to compensate for the tendency of the harder steel to resist natural wear and flow

3.2 Reduction in contact stresses As mentioned earlier, one of the main cause of development of RCF is the
high contact stress. Contact stress can be reduced by increasing the area of the contact patch between the wheel
and rail. The contact patch depends upon the geometry of the rail and the geometry of the wheels running over it.
The rail can be suitably profiled to increase the contact patch area.

3.3 Lubrication on gauge face of rails and on top of rails By effective gauge face lubrication, the wear on the
gauge face can be controlled appreciably. This is very important since in rail grinding, the target rail profiles on curves
are designed to give two point conformal contacts to reduce the rail stresses but these profiles will promote gauge
face wear of rails. In addition to this, top of rail lubrication is also being adopted onsome railway systems to reduce
the slip and traction forces, which in turn will help to reduce the RCF on rails and wheels. Lubrication substantially
reduces the traction stress at the wheel-rail surface and therefore increases the number of contact cycles by wheel
loads before the RCF initiates. However, lubrication strategy is to be applied judiciously. For the rails that already
have surface cracks, liquid lubricant that infiltrate the crack reduce friction between the crack faces and thereby
reduce the resistance to crack propagation. Thus application of lubricants to damaged rails may increase the rate of
crack growth.

3.4 Using reliable and accurate non destructive testing techniques Due to high growth of RCF as well as
internal defects in rails in heavy haul operations, the risk of rail breakage can be minimized by using state of the art
non-destructive testing techniques such as ultrasonic, laser based system and EMAT etc. for detection of flaws and
ensuring timely remedial action.

3.5 Using self-steering bogies A stiff bogie resists displacement of the wheelset with respect to the truck frame.
The more flexible the suspension, the greater the potential for favorable steering moments to reduce the yaw angle in
curves and thereby reduce RCF. However, a more flexible truck has a greater ability to respond to unfavorable
steering moments and increase the yaw angle, especially in the case of trucks that have been poorly maintained and
are running with a number of worn-out components. A number of trucks have been developed to improve upon the
limited curving performance of the standard three-piece truck but with improved stability in tangent track.

3.6 Improving track geometry (including weld geometry) Maintaining track gauge is important for reduction of
damage. The problem of false flange of a hollow wheel riding on the field side of the rail will be more in case of wide
gauge. Surface defects develop rapidly on the low rail along with the plastic flow of metal due to high contact stresses.
Similarly, tight gauge in straight track promotes gauge corner contact, bogie hunting and RCF.

The poor weld geometry such as misalignment of the weld joint or cupping of weld/ high weld are associated
with high rate of RCF development adjacent to the irregularity. Improving the weld geometry is very much necessary
to reduce hunting and squat formation etc.

4.0 RAIL GRINDING How will it help?

Preventive rail grinding is mostly adopted as a regular track maintenance strategy where a single pass
grinding at high speed is carried out frequently to remove the cracks in initial stages and restore back the desired
profile.

4.1 Rail grinding can be used to reshape the rail head to engineered rail profiles so as to have a favorable rail
wheel interaction, thus reducing the contact stresses and maintain favorable steering of the wheels. This will result in
reduction in damage to the rail and wheel surfaces.

4.2 Rail grinding will shift the contact of majority of the wheels from the damaged area on the rail, thus avoiding
further growth of defects in damaged region.

4.3 Rail grinding will avoid the contact of tread of wheel on misaligned welds, thus resulting in reduction in
hunting on straight track and avoiding consequent damage.

4.4 Rail grinding will remove the cracks in the initial stages of their development, thus avoiding their growth
deeper into the rail and reduction in rail/weld failures. The cracks will not be allowed to grow in high growth zone and
will be ground in initial stages when their growth is slow.

4.5 Rail grinding will remove the martensitic metal layer on rail top, which is the cause for development of cracks
due to its brittle nature.

4.6 Due to difference in hardness of rail, weld and HAZ, dip formation starts in the vicinity of the weld due to
differential wear. This weld dip also promotes RCF in various forms. The dip formation will be avoided by regul ar rail
grinding.

4.7 Where other surface defects such as wheel burns, scabs, low or high welds etc. exist on rail, grinding will
help to taper down the defects after each grinding pass so as to reduce the damage due to these defects.

4.8 Rail grinding minimizes the possibility of development of hollow wheels and RCF development, thereby
increasing the wheel life substantially.

The rail grinding thus helps to increase the life of the rail substantially. By increasing the contact patch, the
stress on the wheel also reduces which results in increased life of the wheel as well.

The safety performance and the reliability of the operation improve due to reduced breakdown of assets
during service.

5.0 Target Rail Profiles for Indian Railways

5.1 One of the main purposes of rail grinding is to make Rail Wheel Interaction favourable so as to have the
optimum area of contact between wheel and rail to reduce stress. Since Rail Wheel interaction will change from
straight to curved track, from mild to sharp curve, from high rail to low rail the target rail profile also need to change
for these situations. NRC Canada has designed four types of target rail profiles/template for use on Indian Railways.

Contact Point Central (CPC)
Contact Point Field (CPF),
High Sharp (HS) and
High Mild (HM).

As the name suggests, in CPC profile the wheel will make the contact with the rail in the centre of the top
table while in CPF profile the contact of the wheel on the rail will shift towards the field side.

5.2 CPC and CPF profiles will be used for straight track while HS profile is for high rail of a sharp curve (defined
to be more than 1.25 degree) and HM for high rail of a mild curve. For the low rail of a sharp curve, CPF profile will be
used and for low rail with mild curve, CPC profile will be used.

5.3 For the straight track, two profiles have been designed. CPC is being used on Down track and CPF will be
used for UP track. The idea is to have half of the straight track with CPC and the balance with CPF. In case of long
stretches of single line track, half of it will be demarcated for CPC and the other half for CPF. More than 80% of the
track length on IR having straight alignment. In case we have only one profile say CPC for the straight track, the
wheels through their journey will mostly be making contact on the center of the rail, thereby wearing out more at a
particular location. This will result into development of hollowness/stress raiser in the wheel causing high stress
concentration during Rail Wheel interaction. To even out the wear of the wheel, the contact is shifted from the
central portion of the rail towards the field side for half of the track. In fact, there is another profile for straight track
known as CPG (contact point gauge), where contact is shifted towards the gauge face side. This profile has not been
adopted for IR since we already have damage towards the gauge face on straight track at many locations.

5.4 For the high rail on curves, HS and HM profiles have been designed to give two point conformal contact. With
the flange contact on wheel, lateral wear on the gauge face of the rail will increase and an effective gauge face
lubrication strategy has to be adopted to mitigate the wear.

5.5 The process of designing of target rail profile is known as Pummeling. For the design, the sample wheel
profiles for a number of wheels from coaching stock as well as freight stock are collected with the help of MINIPROF
(for wheels). These wheels are made to run on a proposed target rail profile in simulation mode in a software known
as Pummeling software and the stress pattern generated by these wheels on the surface of the rail is studied. This
exercise is repeated for number of proposed target rail profiles and the rail profile giving the least stress concentration
on the rail is selected as target rail profile.

6.0 Implementation of Rail Grinding on Indian Railways

Indian Railways procured two 72-stones high productivity rail grinders from M/S Loram Maintenance of Way, USA in
March 2011. CSTT-NRC Canada in consultation with RDSO developed the grind implementation programme for
Indian Railways after inspection of track and rolling stock running on the system. It has been decided to go for
Preventive Gradual grinding approach initially on Indian Railways and switch over to preventive grinding after the rail
surface is improved. In preventive gradual grinding, the removal of the metal will be more than the preventive grinding
by giving a single pass at medium speed on straight track and three passes on curves. Thus the engineered rail
profiles will be achieved gradually after few cycles of grinding.
The grinding is being done at a speed of 15-18 kmph. The grind interval for first two-three cycles will be kept
as 30-35 GMT and will increase to 50-60 GMT subsequently. It is hoped that target rail profile will be achieved after
2-3 cycles of grinding. Grinding has been done on selected routes of Southern Railway, South Central Railway, South
Eastern Railway, East Central Railway, Northern Railway and North Central Railway. Although it is difficult to quantify
the benefits of rail grinding in a timespan of two years, the results seen in terms of relief in RCF, change in contact
band and improved riding are encouraging.

7.0 Conclusions

The rolling contact fatigue damage will emerge extensively on rail surface with the increase in speed and axle
loads. The adverse effect will be there on other track components and rolling stock as well, resulting in greater
maintenance efforts and high cost. The management of RCF can be done by adopting suitable strategies such as
Improving wheel and rail profiles and metallurgy, gauge face and top of rail friction management, improved vehicle
characteristics and rail inspection. Profiling of rails by preventive rail grinding has proved to be one of the effective
process to enhance the life of rail, other track components as well as wheels resulting in large savings in addition to
better safety performance. The reliability of operations and safety is a major requirement for high
speedopeartions.Depending upon the operating conditions on a railway system and cost-benefit analysis, an
appropriate strategy involving number of measures has to be adopted to control RCF.

References :

1. Guidelines to Best Practices Heavy Haul Railway Operations International Heavy Haul Association, 2009
2. Guidelines to Best Practices for Heavy Haul Railway Operations International Heavy Haul Association,
2001
3. The Art and Science of Rail Grinding by Allan M. Zarembski
4. Wheel-Rail interface handbook by R. Lewis and U. Olofsson
5. A practical approach to controlling Rolling Contact Fatigue in Railways by Eric E. Magel, Kevin J. Sawley,
Peter S. Sroba& Joe Kalusek
6. Rail Grinding on the South Central Railway Region of Indian Railways by Peter Sroba, Pradeep Kumar Garg,
Robert Caldwell

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