#Industry (Production, process)
Flexible Approach to Surface Hardening for Rail Wheels
Control of Rolling Contact Fatigue of Rails
High-throughput quenching and tempering process for wheels for high-speed trains
Railroad expansions in emerging economies world, and rail system updates in the developed world, have sustained demand for wheel forming machines and lines over the past five years. Now, a heat-treating specialist has developed a system for hardening the rims or railway wheels of different shapes and sizes so that the operation can operate continuously without interruptions for altering treatment formulae or sequences to account for different wheel sizes.
LOI Thermprocess is a Tenova Group company that focuses on steel and aluminum heat treatment.
In addition to flexible operation, the new wheel rim hardening machines significantly reduce the time required for tests and ensure higher process security.
With the individually controlled nozzles, which can be changed from one batch to the next, the wheel rim hardening machines can be used for treating wheels of almost any dimensions. The control system allows the cooling table program to be similarly adjusted. This means that batch changes can be completed automatically without interrupting production. Even so, precise repeatability of the quenching and tempering processes is ensured for each specific batch.
The designers developed an extremely robust system, without any sensitive mechanisms. As a result, the new tables have significantly fewer parts than previously designs. The tables consist mainly of standard components available from stock, meaning that spare parts can be delivered quickly.
