Wear impact on rolling contact fatigue crack growth in rails

Wear and rolling contact fatigue of rails are major problems for the railway industry and it is of high value to develop models for prediction of rail life. In this paper, a 2D FE model is used to simulate crack growth of a single head check--like RCF crack in an idealized rail. The presented model takes into account wear through crack truncation and allows for crack curving. The influence of a number of parameters on the net crack growth rate is presented for different values of the dissipated contact energy. Studied parameters include surface friction, contact pressure, fluid pressurization and wear coefficient. From the studies it is concluded that the net growth rate is highly dependent on all the studied parameters. This highlights the need for accurate estimates of contact forces and material parameters in order to accurately determine wear impact on crack growth in rails