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Consideration of Fatigue Crack Growth Aspects in the Design and Assessment of Railway Axles

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Recent Trends in Fracture and Damage Mechanics

Abstract

Current design rules for railway wheelsets do not directly address issues related to fatigue crack propagation. Nevertheless, the latter topic is a part of the revised safety concept for passenger trains recently adopted in German railway applications. Numerous research activities, including international cooperative projects, have been conducted in the past decade aiming at quantifying fatigue crack growth rates in railway axles and estimating their inspection intervals based on the fracture mechanics methodology. This paper summarizes some experience and findings obtained by the authors within several studies dealing with the assessment of fatigue crack propagation in railway steels. Particular aspects highlighted in the paper include material characterization, effects of the specimen geometry and crack tip constraint on fatigue crack growth rates, stress analyses of axles and wheelsets, the derivation of stress intensity factor solutions applicable to specific conditions achieved in railway axles, considerations of the variability and scatter of geometrical parameters and material data in fatigue crack growth calculations.

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Acknowledgments

The results reported in this paper were partly derived within the framework of the research project Safe and Economic Operation of Running Gears (Sicherer und wirtschaftlicher Betrieb von Eisenbahnfahrwerken) [9] funded by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) under research grant no. 19P4021 A-F. This financial support as well as a fruitful cooperation with all research and industrial companies involved in the above project is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer IWM, Wöhlerstr. 11, 79108, Freiburg, Germany

    Igor Varfolomeev & Michael Luke

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  1. Igor Varfolomeev
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  2. Michael Luke
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Correspondence to Igor Varfolomeev .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg, Germany

    Geralf Hütter

  2. Institute of Mechanics and Fluid Dynamics, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg, Germany

    Lutz Zybell

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Varfolomeev, I., Luke, M. (2016). Consideration of Fatigue Crack Growth Aspects in the Design and Assessment of Railway Axles. In: Hütter, G., Zybell, L. (eds) Recent Trends in Fracture and Damage Mechanics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21467-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21467-2_5

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21467-2

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