Research on Operational Characteristics of Imported Rails under Conditions of East Siberian Railway

Abstract

In world's manufacturing of railroad rails there are several thermal bonding methods: differentiated waterflow quenching, air-blast or spray quenching, rail head's hardening in polymer solution and bulk oil hardening; rails' service durability is strongly dependent on thermo-hardening methods. Until recently, all of rails, produced at Nizhniy Tagil and Kuznetsk Metallurgical Works, were subjected to bulk oil hardening. Only in 2010-2011, in the Russian Federation, differentiated air quenching of rails was started at the JSC "EVRAZ ZSMK"; and rail heads' hardening in polymer solution - at the JSC "Mechel". At the same time, exploitation of imported rails with differentiated hardening has been performed on Russian railways since 1995. Service durability of these rails in Siberia and the Far North is of considerable interest. In this paper we investigated the quality of P65-type rails, made in Japan, removed after use from curved track section of the East-Siberian railway.