Comparative assessment of fatigue and fracture behaviour of cast and forged railway wheels

Tarafder, S and Sivaprasad, S and Ranganath, V R (2007) Comparative assessment of fatigue and fracture behaviour of cast and forged railway wheels. Fatigue and Fracture of Engineering Materials and Structures, 30 (9). pp. 863-876.

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Abstract

A comparative evaluation of fatigue and fracture behaviour of commercially produced cast and forged rail wheels has been made using specimens extracted from various locations of the wheel quadrant. A systematic investigation in the web and rim regions of the wheel quadrant with various notch orientations showed that the forged material exhibited a better intrinsic resistance to fatigue crack growth than the cast material. Since linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) based fracture toughness could not be validated for both the cast and forged wheel material, elastic plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM) based characteristic fracture toughness was used. Results showed that fracture resistance of the forged material is superior to that of the cast material. Cast wheel specimens exhibited unstable crack extension in comparison to substantial stable tearing in forged specimens. Microstructural and fractographic analyses showed that the cast wheel material contained large amounts of inclusions. The poor fracture resistance of cast wheelmaterial is therefore attributed to the inferior material quality.

Item Type:Article
Official URL/DOI:doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2695.2007.01158.x
Uncontrolled Keywords:Fatigue, Fracture, Rail wheel, Fracture mechanics
Divisions:Material Science and Technology
ID Code:397
Deposited By:Dr S Tarafder
Deposited On:18 Mar 2010 09:50
Last Modified:17 Feb 2012 16:45
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