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Rail CRC Research suggests new wheel-steels could reduce
maintenance costs
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Rail CRC Develops Stronger Railway Wheel Steel
RAIL CRC research has developed improved wheel-steel that could
significantly reduce maintenance costs for rollingstock owners and
operators, potentially saving the Australian Rail Industry tens of
millions of dollars annually.
Queensland Rail Mechanical Engineer (Structural) and Rail CRC
Project Manager Tim Constable said that the improved material
potentially offered several major benefits for the Australian Rail
Industry.
"The new alloy steels offer significantly enhanced strength and
toughness which have positive implications for performance", Mr
Constable said.
"For rollingstock operators, it could mean significantly reduced
maintenance costs, which are a major area of expense. The pay-back
would increase incrementally over time as existing rolling stock
wheel material is phased out.
"It could mean a saving of upwards of tens of millions of dollars
annually for the Australian rail industry, which most forecasts
expect to grow significantly in the next 15-20 years. There are
also benefits to safety as the new steels are significantly more
durable.
"In the case of wheel manufacturing, it could give Australia a
competitive advantage in the face of cheap overseas labour, and
greater export potential through a value-added product."
Mr Constable said the project research team, based at Monash
University and led by Dr Bernard Chen and researcher Hung Nien Kha,
had recently developed an alternate manufacturing process to allow
compressive residual stresses in wheel rims to be achieved using
new alloy steels.
The compressive residual stresses improve the wheel's ability to
resist surface defects, and are considered an important safety
feature.
These compressive residual stresses are currently achieved using
the existing steels, but because of differences in the metallurgy
of the new steels, compressive residual stresses were previously
unachievable with existing manufacturing procedures.
"We believe we have overcome this and other major barriers, making
the process potentially suitable for commercialisation", Mr
Constable said. We have found a solution to issues that to my
knowledge havent been solved before in the rail industry.
"Other researchers in various parts of the world have looked at
similar low carbon steels, but with different alloy characteristics
from ours. They have put them through various stages of in-service
trials and some have experienced problems during manufacture.
"We believe our alloys are better, and could potentially
offer greater performance benefits for lower, raw-material costs."
Mr Constable said the next step for the project involved full-scale
experimental testing to validate the results of the Monash
modelling work by trialling the proposed new manufacturing process
to determine whether the full scale wheels would behave as the
model predicted. The team will work with industry partners towards
commercialisation of the technology.
The Rail CRC rail steel project is one of approximately 40 Rail CRC
research projects established and supported under the Australian
Governments Cooperative Research Centres Programme.
Rail CRC (The Cooperative Research Centre for Railway Engineering
and Technology) consists of rail industry partners Queensland Rail,
Rail Corp, TMG Rail Technology, ARTC, Pacific National - and six
university partners Monash University, Queensland University of
Technology, the University of Wollongong, University of South
Australia, Central Queensland University, and The University of
Queensland.
