The Evolution and Application of Rail Profile Grinding
Date
1988-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Railway Engineering Association
Abstract
The elimination of rail surface defects through the use of rotating grinding wheels, i.e. rail grinding, has been used by freight railroads since its introduction by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the late 1930's. That application used the first rail grinder cars for the elimination of corrugations, engine burns, and batter at rail ends. Subsequent applications of rail grinding extended rail grinding to almost all types of rail surface defects to include; corrugations, joint batter, weld batter, engine burns, flaking and shelling, as well as for the grinding of mill scale from new rail (1).This traditional defect elimination or rail "rectification" remained the primary use of rail grinding from that early application in the 1930's until the 1980's. However, in recent years this traditional grinding practice has evolved from the defect elimination approach to the recently emerging rail "maintenance" or "preventive" grinding approaches. This latter approach does not allow for the development of any significant surface defects, but rather attempts to eliminate the development of these surface defects, before they emerge on the railhead. This is of particular interest to the heavy axle load environments, such as is common in North American freight railways, where rail exhibits a relatively short service life. This maintenance grinding offers the potential for increasing the life of rail, in such severe service applications. This evolution from traditional grinding, to the emerging practices of profile control and maintenance grinding has resulted in a significant broadening of rail maintenance, and introduced the potential for increasing the service life (and thus reducing the cost) of rail in severe service track. Rail profile grinding is the technique that has been utilized to achieve this increase in rail service life. This paper will present the fundamental concepts behind this technique of rail "profile grinding."
Description
Keywords
Rail profiling grinding, Grinding
Citation
Zarembski, A. M., “The Evolution and Application of Rail Profile Grinding”, Bulletin of the American Railway Engineering Association, Bulletin 718, Volume 89, December 1988.