Integrated Computational Materials, Process and Product Engineering – IC-MPPE 2022

Accurate prediction of the wear evolution and damage of rails and wheels is essential for effective maintenance processes to be achieved. Knowing with more certainty when grinding/turning or replacement is needed can help in planning the processes better which in turn will help reduce costs and keep availability of track and vehicles at an optimum.
There are very sophisticated multi-body...

The last few years showed the infrastructure managers that it is not only necessary to create and maintain a superstructure able to carry the loads from the trains but a system also being resilient to environmental impacts like floods, fire, landslides or else. At the same time a fast-rising importance of green travel possibilities and the shift from road towards rail traffic is happening, not...

Currently railway turnouts have a significant higher demand for maintenance compared to standard / tangent track. The root cause behind this increased maintencance demand is based on the effect of higher forces in the wheel/ rail contact due to transition zones, e.g. in the crossing panel or in the switch panel.
In the European project Shift2Rail, voestalpine first analysed together with its...

Modelling of squats
Sandra Baltic, Timna Gschwandl, Werner Daves

Squat-type rail cracks are characterised by a localised depression of the rail-wheel running band. A squat-type crack typically starts on a rail head surface and grows to depths of a few millimetres. Such cracks can grow within month or few years to a size, that rails have to be replaced. As this damage type is a worldwide...