A pin-on-disk wear map of rail and wheel materials from different standards

Wheel and rail materials are exposed to a large number of factors that affect their wear-resistant performance such as, large contact pressures, sliding speeds, high temperatures, material degradation by natural and artificial contaminants, etc. This directly affects the maintenance operations, so, an accurate wear prediction is required. Wear maps are an important tool to predict and identify wear regimes that impact maintenance schedules and consequently cost reduction. This work aimed to develop wear maps for a 115RE rail material and an ER8 wheel material, which are materials used in railways systems in Mexico, as well as identify the wear regimes and wear mechanisms replicating the wheel-rail interface conditions. Metallographic analysis and hardness tests were carried out for both materials. Wear tests were carried out by using a pin-on-disk tribometer. The resulting wear maps showed that a catastrophic wear regime occurs at medium sliding speed and low contact pressure values for the wheel. On the other hand, for rail, catastrophic wear regime occurs at high sliding speed and low contact pressure values.