果冻传媒

This project aims at developing a probabilistic fatigue crack growth and fracture model applicable to squat defects in rails, which can be used to calculate the residual fatigue life including the associated uncertainty.  A squat is a rolling contact fatigue crack in the head of a rail.  It is assumed that, because of a lack of prediction capabilities to date, the current inspection and replacement policy is rather conservative. Reducing this conservatism is beneficial for (at least) three parts. Firstly, such an approach can reduce the downtime of a track and optimize the maintenance resources which both reduce the needed maintenance costs and travel interruption. Because the Netherlands has a relatively busy train network that is crucial for our economy, this is of great importance. Secondly, given the current climate challenges it is of great importance to reduce the usage of materials as much as possible and therefore longer usage of rail is always preferable over replacement. Lastly, due to political instability in the world resources such a steel become scarce. So again, extending the lifetime would be beneficial. The above-mentioned challenges are not only applicable to the Netherlands. Squat defects occur in the worldwide track network.