Mechanical Properties of Railway Wheel for Standard Reinforcement

For the high quality of wheel, the railway wheel has standardized such as UIC, KS, and JIS code but the chemical composition, the mechanical property and the hardness is merely requested. Although the standard of railway wheel has sustained, the damages of railway wheel have been occurred in service running. Because of wheel damage with spalling, shelling and thermal crack, the maintenance cost for the railway wheel has increased. In order to reduce wheel damage, it is necessary to reinforce the standard of railway wheel. In present study, the fracture mechanics characteristics of railway wheel such as threshold stress intensive factor, fracture toughness and impact energy depended on temperature have tested. The result shows that the standard of railway wheel has to supplement fracture toughness and impact energy depended on low temperature in order to reduce the wheel damage.