Abstract
The safety evaluations of railway wheelsets make use of the static fracture toughness obtained in ingot materials. The static fracture toughness of wheelset materials has been extensively studied by experiments, but the dynamic fracture toughness with respect to wheelset materials has not been studied enough yet. It is necessary to evaluate the characteristics of the fracture mechanics depending on each location for a full-scale wheelset for high-speed trains, because the load state for each location of the wheelset while running is different the contact load between the wheel and rail, cyclic stress in the wheel plate, etc. This paper deals with the fracture toughness depend on load rates. The fracture toughness depending on load rate data shows that once the downward curve from quasi-static values was reached, subsequent values showed a slow increase with respect to the impact velocity. This means that dynamic fracture toughness should be considered in the design code of the wheelset material.
