The wear resistance and the rolling contact fatigue (RCF) behaviour of different rail
steel grades versus a railway wheel steel is analysed in this work. For this purpose, a
twin-disc test was setup, in order to replicate the in-service damage suffered by the
rails due to the contact pressure appearing in the rail and to analyse the wear and
RCF behaviour of the rail steel in a quick and efficient way. Different rail steel grades
have been studied under different test conditions and the influence of the applied
load and the sliding rate on the wear and RCF behaviour of these materials has been
analysed. At the end of the tests, the specimen mass loss was determined and
degradation phenomena assessed by metallographic characterization. The nature,
shape and size of the cracks were analysed and compared to those obtained in the
tests carried out with the same materials at a pilot plant scale. It has been
demonstrated that the proposed Twin-Disc tests are able to predict the behaviour of
the different steel grades in rail-wheel systems in a quick and easy way.The authors acknowledge the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad for financing
IPT-2012-0320-420000 project, in whose context this work was performed