Abstract
The objective of this paper was to investigate the wear behaviour of railway wheel steel under the combined condition of bi-directional operation and variable amplitude loading. Rolling-sliding wear tests show that the wear rate of the wheel disc significantly drops at the moment of the bi-directional operation, and then it rises with the increase in reversed rolling cycles until a steady wear state is reached. When the test was conducted under the combined condition of the bi-directional operation and a two-step loading, the wear rate of the wheel disc after bi-directional operation decreases with the increase in the first step contact stress. These wear behaviours can be explained by the variation of the reversed plastic deformation and the movement of wave structure produced by the bi-directional operation. The wave structure moves down with the increase in reversed rolling cycles due to the reduction of the resistance to reversed plastic deformation. This reduces the resistance to the propagation of surface cracks and leads to the increase of wear rate. The resistance to reversed plastic deformation rises with the increase in the first step contact stress, which makes the wave structure move towards to the worn surface and reduces the wear rate of the wheel steel.
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