RAIL CRC research has developed improved wheel-steel that could significantly reduce maintenance costs for rollingstock owners and operators, potentially saving the Australian Rail Industry tens of millions of dollars annually.

Queensland Rail Mechanical Engineer Structural and Rail CRC Project Manager Tim Constable said that the improved material potentially offered several major benefits for the Australian Rail Industry.

“The new alloy steels offer significantly enhanced strength and toughness which have positive implications for performance,” Mr Constable said.

“For rollingstock operators, it could mean significantly reduced maintenance costs, which are a major area of expense.  The pay-back would increase incrementally over time as existing rolling stock wheel material is phased out. 

“It could mean a saving of upwards of tens of millions of dollars annually for the Australian rail industry, which most forecasts expect to grow significantly in the next 15-20 years.  There are also benefits to safety as the new steels are significantly more durable.

“In the case of wheel manufacturing, it could give Australia a competitive advantage in the face of cheap overseas labour, and greater export potential through a value-added product.”

Mr Constable said the project research team, based at Monash University and led by Dr Bernard Chen and researcher Hung Nien Kha, had recently developed an alternate manufacturing process to allow compressive residual stresses in wheel rims to be achieved using new alloy steels. 

The compressive residual stresses improve the wheels’ ability to resist surface defects, and are considered an important safety feature. 

These compressive residual stresses are currently achieved using the existing steels, but because of differences in the metallurgy of the new steels, compressive residual stresses were previously unachievable with existing manufacturing procedures.

“We believe we have overcome this and other major barriers, making the process potentially suitable for commercialisation,” Mr Constable said.  “We have found a solution to issues that to my knowledge haven’t been solved before in the rail industry.

“Other researchers in various parts of the world have looked at similar low carbon steels, but with different alloy characteristics from ours.  They have put them through various stages of in-service trials and some have experienced problems during manufacture.  We believe our alloys are better, and could potentially offer greater performance benefits for lower, raw-material costs.” 

Mr Constable said the next step for the project involved full-size experimental testing to validate the results of the Monash modelling work, and to trial the proposed new manufacturing process to determine whether the full scale wheels would behave as the model predicted.  The team will work with industry partners towards commercialisation of the technology.

The Rail CRC rail steel project is one of approximately 40 Rail CRC research projects established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme.