Effect of head wear on rail underhead radius stresses and fracture under high axle load conditions

A rail can fail by either wear (loss of profile) or by rolling contact fatigue (RCF) (surface cracks growing by fatigue which may cause a rail break) and requires replacing. The aim of my doctorate research has been to investigate the parameters that affect multi-axial fatigue and fracture behaviour of the rail underhead radius influenced by wear in heavy haul operation. The numerical analyses were performed using the newly developed “User supplied subroutines” (UVAR-M) programmed in FORTRAN-Code and also Extended finite element method (X-FEM) modelling in commercial code ABAQUS 6.11-2. My research has been based on field measurements conducted for rails in heavy haul iron ore operations in Pilbara region of Western Australia. The results of this thesis can be used to examine the influence of wheel-rail interaction behaviour and rail wear on the possibility of a catastrophic rail failure developing from RCF damage.