METHOD FOR HEAT TREATMENT OF THE RUNNING SURFACE OF THE HEAD OF THE PEARLITIC STEEL RAILS

The paper deals with the new approach to the optimization of the pearlitic rail’s head hardening process aimed at balancing the relation between strength and ductility of the head running surface. In the industrial process, efforts have been undertaken so far to maximize the hardness of the rail’s head while maintaining its pearlite structure, resulting in obtaining enhanced wear resistance and resistance to the contact fatigue defects initiation. The new approach, described in this paper, aims at designing the head hardening process enabling achievement of the high hardness of the running surface combined with high ductility expressed in terms of the total elongation. To achieve this aim of the investigation, a computer program was developed capable of predicting the occurrence of the phase transformations during rail head cooling and microstructure features after cooling. The program was linked with dedicated inverse module enabling the adjustment of the cooling conditions to achieve the required state of the pearlitic structure.