2007-01-2720

Railcar Hollow Axle

Ronaldo de Faria Antunes, M.Sc. Antonio Sergio Medeiros Fonseca, Dr.-Ing
V&M Tubes - V&M do Brasil S.A.

Carlos Cimini Jnior, PhD

Center for Aeronautic Studies of the Federal University of Minas Gerais CEA/UFMG

Copyright 2007 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc

ABSTRACT The growing Brazilian railroad industry is searching ways to decrease the railcar weight. Just in this way the V&M do Brasil developed the railcar hollow axle through modern material and manufacture technologies. It is up to 40% lighter than the equivalent conventional solid axle. Besides the weight saving and related fuel consumption and emission benefits, the hollow axle is fully compatible with the present truck components. This paper presents the development methodology, some calculation figures and the result of the full-scale fatigue test carried out with hollow axle prototypes. INTRODUCTION The aim to increase the productivity by the railroad services worldwide is tightly related to the gross rail load (GRL) increment. This leads to higher stresses acting over the car parts arising new engineering challenges and solutions. One example of the engineering effort to cope with the GRL increment was the High Capacity Axle for Railway Freight Cars (Figure 1) used in the USA and patented by Smith and Colburn [1] in 2001.

That axle was designed for the 125 t service car with 143 t GRL (315,000 lb). The authors stated that this design has as advantage the reduction of fretting corrosion and the consequent fatigue life improvement. But the additional weight came with operational and maintenance costs penalties. On the other hand, the figures from Federal Railroad Administration - FRA [2] show that axle failures other than journal problems are rare (Figure 2), even after 2002, considering the total numbers of wagons in the USA, about 1.5 million, and the GRL growth.

Figure 2. Frequency of broken/bent axles between wheel seats in the USA from 1991 to 2006 [2]. A possible conclusion is that the axle is a very robust component, maybe more than the necessary. From this point of view it was proposed the evaluation of the possibility of decrease the axle weight and increase the energy efficiency through the hollow axle concept.

Figure 1. High capacity axle sketch [1].

METHODOLOGY CONCEPT The hollow axle concept in the railroad service did exist since the 19th Century as shown by Mothe [3] patent in 1864 (Figure 3).

CALCULATION Different from wheels, there is no provision in the AAR standard design rules either for rules or acceptance criteria for new axle designs. Despite that, a classical approach using analytical calculation available in Shigley [4], Juvinall [5], Spotts [6] and Shames [7] was applied to evaluate the acting stresses and fatigue limits over the axle. Both solid and hollow designs were analyzed at several loading cases related to the static and dynamic loads from the actual service and from the bench test too. Since the beginning it was assumed that the new hollow axle should present a calculated infinite life as well the solid axle design, under the typical railroad service loading. Many factors were used in the calculation such as dynamic effects, geometry, temperature, superficial finishing and so on. The Soderberg law was adopted to estimate the fatigue strength because it is a conservative criteria and easy to use. It predicts an infinite fatigue life if the combined alternating and mean stresses at the component are below the straight line between the calculated fatigue stress limit (vertical diagram axle) and the yield stress (horizontal diagram axle). Complementary stresses evaluations through finite element method were done for some loading cases. The results were compared with the analytical ones. MATERIAL The standard M101 from AAR [4] defines the chemical composition, heat treatment, grain size and other material characteristics, which are markedly related to the solid axle manufacture process. Thus, such standard was used only as reference, while the material specification for the hollow axles was focused on the fatigue strength. The Table 1 shows the tensile and grain size requirements from M-101 standard from AAR [4] and the results from the proposed steel, named VMB RR80. Table 1. Tensile test and ASTM E112 grain-size requirements.

Figure 3. Improvement in Car Axles patent drawing, Mothe [3]. New patents and designs emerged since then and nowadays the hollow axle concept is consolidated at highspeed passenger cars and locomotives. The current development is the extension of this concept to the freight cars because this is the main segment at the Brazilian railroads, which uses moderate speed and high loads. As the main railroad companies follow the American Association of Railroads AAR standards, the same reference was adopted. Considering the geometric specifications from the AAR standard [4] and the proposal of fully compatibility with the present truck components, it was concluded that only the geometry of the body of the axle (the region between wheel seats) could be slightly changed. This dimension was investigated together the new dimensional parameter for the axle, the wall thickness. Other important parameters considered in the analysis were the material, the hot rolling process of seamless tubes and the forging process of the axle ends. The Figure 4 shows the sketch of the solid axle design compared to the one from the hollow concept. a)

b)

Figure 4. a) Sketch of the solid axle design. b) Sketch of the hollow axle design.

One can note that there are different grades of heat treatment according to the AAR [4] standard. The results from the proposed material for hollow axles fell in the grade H range. MANUFACTURE PROCESS It is important to show the contribution from the manufacture process of seamless steel tubes to achieve the desired properties of the final product (Table 1). The process control during the steel making ensures the right chemical composition and the steel cleanliness, while the piercing and hot rolling works at the specified conditions provide a fine and homogeneous microstructure. The hollows are also heat treated and automatically inspected to detect flaws and verify its dimensions. Hundreds of parameters are monitored and registered along these steps. The change from tube to axle beam is made by a hot forging process, which combines the rotation and translation movements of a manipulator with the variable stroke of the pulsating hammers, all controlled by CNC. Such equipment allows to hot-form the tube to a final shape very close to the final dimensions, keeping the material flow lines continuous even after the finishing machining. After that, the axle beam may be heat-treated, finished and reinspected on the forged areas. One prototype is shown in Figure 5.

rotating beam under flexion due to a four point loading (2 loads + 2 reactions), similar to the conditions of a specimen during a test for S-N curve.

Figure 6. Full-scale fatigue test layout. One test strategy could be to prove that the component would last forever under loads equivalent to the actual ones, but it is important to remember that railroad axles may last many decades accumulating up to 108 or 109 alternate loading cycles. Just to illustrate: even at the test bench, a continuous fatigue test of only one axle at the angular speed equivalent to 80 km/h would take more than three years to accumulate 109 cycles. In order to avoid these prohibitive conditions, another strategy could be to accelerate the test increasing the loads over than the material fatigue limit for infinite life previously estimated. It would prove that the axle would fail validating the calculation methodology, which was used to predict the stresses for infinite life in the axle design stage. This strategy was chosen and the suitable test load was defined as stated above. Doing this, besides a quick validation of the theoretical results, the crack or fracture position would be known and compared with the calculated stresses and with the actual data. Based on the highest calculated stresses and the critical positions stated by Miranda [9], a periodic ultrasonic inspection was established to detect the cracks before the fracture if it would happen.

Figure 5 - Hollow axle prototype. This manufacture process is similar to the one used to produce solid railcar axles as well tubular trailer axles that are extensively applied in trucks, worldwide. FULL SCALE FATIGUE TEST Classical analytical calculation approach with well-known practical, and frequently conservative, correction factors were used. Also the material properties showed favorable figures to the application. But as the consequences of a failure in the railroad service may be catastrophic, the theoretical predictions should be validated by any practical test at a controlled environment. In this way a full-scale test in a bench was proposed because it could not only validate the results but also do it more flexible, faster and safer than normal field tests. The test layout used is shown in Figure 6 and describes a

RESULTS The Figure 7 presents the theoretical results from the journal section just beside the dust guard radius for type K 6 x 9 x 1600 mm axle design under a load case proposed by AAR [4] specification S-660. Such loading considers dynamic vertical (2 times the vertical static car load of 130 t) and lateral (1 time the vertical static car load) overloads.

Internal surface

External surface

Ratched marks

Figure 7. Fracture surface of a fractured hollow axle during fatigue test. Fatigue fractures often start at several points [10]. It can be seen in Figure 7 where the fracture surface has multiple ratched marks coming from the external surface. The small cracks from different planes merge and propagate inside the wall. But beach marks cannot be seen as usually expected in fatigue fractures because the loading amplitude was constant all the time, according to Godefroid [11]. The shiny region could be thought as a brittle fracture region, but it results from the cyclic contact between the two initial fracture surfaces from the early stages of propagation until the final fracture. More advanced propagation stages can be noticed at the fibrous region. CONCLUSIONS The development methodology for the railcar hollow axle including full-scale fatigue test was presented. The applied calculation tools are suitable to estimate the fatigue strength of the hollow axles once the predicted behavior for the fatigue test load case was practically confirmed. The proposed geometry doesnt require any change and remains satisfying the full compatibility requirements and the predicted weight savings. The proposed material seems to be appropriate whose favorable properties thanks specially to the manufacture process of hot rolling seamless tubes. At this point there is a specific railcar hollow axle designed to be as safe as the present solid axles in service, but with the true possibility of decrease the axle weight and increase the energy efficiency, helping to save costs. The next steps will be toward field and long-term validation of its safety and performance, including also maintenance practices analysis and validation together key railroad service partners who have such expertise.

Figure 7. Soderberg diagram with solid and hollow axle stresses at journal to dust guard transition section. Notice that the tubular axle shows a higher stress than the solid one, once the external diameter is the same but there is a lack of material inside. Nevertheless the two stress points are under the Soderberg law line for both materials what predict an infinite life for this section of the component. As the proposed material has a higher fatigue limit (dashed line) the ratio between the fatigue limit and acting stress of the hollow axle remains the same as the one solid axle. At the load case specified for the fatigue test, the stresses at the same position previously analyzed increases considerably, but still remaining under the line of the Soderberg diagram, position that estimates an infinite life. In fact no one of the tested axles failed in this section. All the failures were observed between wheel seats, slightly under the wheel hubs, just one of the critical positions stated by Miranda [9] and practically in the region of the failure statistics presented by FRA [2]. This region presented the highest calculated amplitude stresses at testing load cases and such stresses were above the straight line of the Soderberg diagram. The proposed interval of periodic ultrasonic inspection was extended, due to long period of time required to cool down the axle before the inspection. An undesirable consequence was that the initial cracks werent detected in time for some axles, which fractured between inspections. Both the superficial cracks detected by ultrasonic inspection and the fractography analysis (Figure 7) clearly confirmed that the cracks started at and propagated from the external surface, despite the internal surface finishing typical of hot work.

REFERENCES [1] - Smith, Stephen W., John W. Colburn. High capacity axle for railway freight cars. United States Patent, US 6,189,456 B1. 20 Feb. 2001. [2] - EUA. Train Accident Trends Report of accidents frequency by cause, Federal Railroad Administration Office of Safety Analysis, 2007. Available in http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/OfficeofSafety/Query/Default.a sp?page=inctally1.asp. Accessed on 17 June 2007. [3] - Mothe, B. J. La. United States Patent, Improvement in car axles, US 44,434. 27 Sept 1864. [4] - EUA. American Association of Railroads - AAR. Manual of standards and recommended practices - wheels and axles - section G. [S.l.] 2004. [5] - Shigley, Joseph Edward. Mechanical engineering design. 4 ed. Singapore: Mc Graw Hill, 1986. 699p.

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