Allowable Bending Fatigue Stress of Rails
Publication: Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 20, Issue 2
Abstract
Allowable bending fatigue stress is an important input for rail section design because of the nature of repeated loading on railways. The majority of rail failures have their origin in fatigue. In the American Railroad Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA), there is only a fatigue test under the name of rolling load test for bonded joints; there are no fatigue tests for parent rail and welded joints. With respect to bonded joints, there is no known railroad or transit agency that uses plain bonded joints as an alternative to either flash butt weld (FBW) or alumino thermite weld (ATW) joints. A rail or weld should be able to resist at least 2 million stress cycle repetitions without developing any cracks. In this paper, allowable bending fatigue stress is formulated analytically with the nominal stress method (S-N). Marin’s six modification factors are applied to the laboratory-determined fatigue limit to account for surface conditions, size, load, temperature, reliability, and shape. Then, Goodman’s mean stress correction factor is applied to account for mean tensile stress in the rail. A brief literature review on the modification factors is included. The allowable bending fatigue stress is calculated and validated theoretically, then compared with the recommended AREMA value. Finally, the current AREMA formula and its recommended value for allowable bending fatigue stress are discussed.
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References
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Practice Periodical on Structural Design and Construction
Volume 20 • Issue 2 • May 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 11, 2013
Accepted: Mar 4, 2014
Published online: Apr 4, 2014
Published in print: May 1, 2015
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