Rainer Wenty Improving In-Track Rail Welding

Plasser & Theurer

IMPROVING IN-TRACK RAIL WELDING

Rainer Wenty, Mechanical Engineer
OEVG, VDEI, AREMA
Plasser & Theurer

SUMMARY

High capacity traffic poses a great challenge for welded joints. A new mobile flash-butt welding
process using a welding robot is an important development specifically for the high demands made by
high speed and heavy haul rail traffic. The cornerstones of this new development are that the whole
process is fully automatic, including measured alignment of the rail ends; direct current (DC) is
applied; the cooling process is temperature controlled; an integrated pulling device enables to conduct
closure welds and pulse welding which reduces the rail consumption. The whole process is fast and
the weld quality is far above stringent standards as the new European Standard EN14587-2 and
therefore has potential to reduce cost to produce long welded rails and also cost of repair welds.

1. INTRODUCTION as standard processes already in the late

Continuous welded rail is standard practice on
today’s railways. Axle loads in excess of 30
tonnes and speeds up to 575 km/h (French
world record) would not be possible on
traditional jointed track. But such extreme
loads and speeds also pose a great challenge
for welded joints, as reported for instance at
the last Heavy Haul Congresses in India[1]. The
durability of welded rail joints still needs
improvement, the service life should be at
least equal to that of the parent rail. In Europe
that would mean 40 years plus or 500 to 1000
million gross tons.
A new mobile flash-butt welding process using
a welding robot is an important development
specifically for the needs of heavy haul traffic,
offering a fully automatic and reproducible
welding process, thus removing the possibility
of human errors. The power supply is DC
instead of AC which greatly helps to raise the
welding quality. The hardness variation of the
rail surface is kept within very tight limits,
which is a prerequisite to achieve long lifetime.
2. FORTY YEARS OF MOBILE FLASH
BUTT WELDING
Few developments have influenced the cost-
efficiency of railway track technology as much
as the introduction of long rails and in
particular continuous welded rail. Bolted rails
demand frequent readjustment of the joints,
the inevitable bump when running over a joint
gap causes damage to both the rolling stock
and rail ends. The essential procedures for the
welding of the rails, flash butt welding and
aluminothermic welding became established
forties.
At first, electric flash butt welding was only
possible in stationary plants and the
aluminothermic procedure was reserved for
field/mobile welding. In view of the outstanding
quality of flash-butt welding the call came very
early on, to be able to use this technique in the
field on track worksites.
Electric resistance welding of rails has been
applied on the railways in plants since around
1930. From the sixties the Paton Institute in
the Ukraine was involved in the development
of a mobile flash-butt welding unit and the first
machines became available around 1965.
Early in 1970 Plasser & Theurer became
acquainted with this development and built the
K 355 PT machine in 1973. Austrian Federal
[2]
Railways (OEBB) was the first railway to put
it into operation. From 1974 the new technique
was used regularly by the OEBB in the course
of the production of continuous welded railway
tracks.
The technology was further developed, major
steps were:
 To integrate the trimming unit into the
welding head. Trimming knives shaped
like the rail profile cut off the surplus
material so that a protuberance of less
than 1 mm is left behind.
 Change the dimensions of the welding
head so that the trailing edge of the rail
foot is lower than the bottom of the jaws.
Rails laying in the track no longer required
lifting so that the welding head can grip the
rail section.

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Plasser & Theurer
 Control of the operation by
microprocessor which minimises human
operating errors.
 Introduction of a computer-controlled
recording and analysing system. The
program is designed to display, record and
analyse the welding process. It displays
the welding current, the force applied and
the stroke and gives exact information if
the weld was performed within the
programmed parameters.
 Integration of an automatic high capacity
rail pulling device into the mobile welding
machine. Closure welds on long welded
rails can be performed below the neutral
rail temperature. This superstretch unit
clamps the rails with jaws at the rail head
and aligns the rail ends hydraulically. Then
the rails are stretched by pulling to the
calculated extent. Now the welding head is
lowered and the rails are welded. By
automatic, synchronous operation of
welding head and puller, the welding can
be done in this tensioned state.
Today welding machines are built in different
designs by a number of suppliers according to
the operating requirements. There are
 fully rail-mounted machines,
 road-rail machines based on a commercial
truck or an earth-moving machine,
 container design – housing all components
in a container of standard dimensions,
 self-loading machines, and
 machines with an additional rail stretcher.
Plasser & Theurer developed the APT 500
series (Figure 1 and Figure 2) and the APT
600 with an integrated rail puller (Figure 3).
Figure 1: Welding head APT 500, based on
the Paton welding head
Improving In-Track Rail Welding
a
Figure 2: Welding process of in-track
welding machine APT 500
Figure 3: Mobile flash-butt welder with
integrated rail pulling and stretching unit,
APT 600
2.1. Application on Heavy Haul Railways
in North America
The demands on the welded joints of heavy
haul railways are particularly high. From
August 1988 the test centre of the AAR in
Pueblo, Colorado (today TTCI) tested the
effects of the increase of the axle loads from
33 to 39 US tons (29.9 to 35.4 metric tonnes).
The results were presented in a Workshop
held by the International Heavy Haul
Association from 14th to 17th October 1990 in
[3]
Pueblo, Colorado . The following figures are
from the report and therefore the original US
tons are quoted (1 US ton = 0.907 metric
tonnes). In one 5° curve (radius = 349 m) and
one 6° curve (radius = 291 m), welded joints
that had been produced using different
welding methods were subjected to fatigue
loading tests. The results can be summarised
as follows:
2.1.1 Aluminothermic welding
With 33 ton axle load 29% of the welds failed
after 65 million tons on the outside rail. With 39
ton axle load the majority of welds failed after
82 million tons, on the outside rail 75% of the
welds had failed after 144 million tons (see
Table 1).
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Plasser & Theurer

Failure rate
2.2. Worldwide application of MFBW
Axle Traffic
Load load Inside
US t mtpa Outside rail
rail
For high capacity railways with high speed or
heavy haul operation the quality and reliability
33 65 29% 0%
of welds is a crucial feature. Therefore flash-
39 65 67% 13% butt welding nowadays is the preferred method
39 82
83% in 5° curve,
- of rail welding on such railways. The majority
92% in 6° curve of production field welds is done with mobile
39 144 - 75% flash-butt welding machines, but also for
Table 1: Failure rates of aluminothermic closure welds on continuous welded rail and
welding for repair welds there is a growing demand for
MFBW.
2.1.2 Stationary Flash Butt Welding (SFBW)
With the increase of speeds and axle loads
Here even after 145 million tons the failure rate also the quality demands on welds are rising.
was only between 4 and 9% at 39 ton axle Acceptance standards have become more
load (Table 2) stringent and some can hardly be met by the
units available today.
Failure rate
Curvature

Axle Traffic 3. BACKGROUND FOR THE

Load load
US t mpta Outside
Inside rail
DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW WELDING
rail ROBOT
33 160 5° 3% 8%
The new European welding standard
39 160 6° 2% 2% EN14587-2 is significant for the increased
39 145 5° 5% 9% demands on mobile flash-butt welding.
39 145 6° - 4% Therefore, based on the experience and
Table 2: Failure rates of stationary flash knowledge of the last four decades, Plasser &
butt welding Theurer started to develop a genuine
automatic welding robot.
2.1.3 Mobile Flash Butt Welding
The aim was not only to meet the new
Due to the small number of welds (welding requirements but also to set new standards in
head K 355 A) no statistical statements could welding quality and to make the performance
be made, however clear trends were of closure welds an integrated capability of the
detectable: machine.

3.1. European Standard EN 14587-2

 With standard head hardened rails
(induction hardening), the failure rate on
This welding standard, which came into force
the outside rails with the MFBW method
in 2009, specifies the requirements for the
was slightly higher than with SFBW.
approval of a flash-butt welding technique “by
 The failure rate of the inside rail welds for
mobile welding machines at sites other than a
MFBW was virtually identical to the SFBW.
fixed plant”. Apart from greater accuracy of the
 MFBW of Head hardened outside rails
geometry after welding and the higher
showed double the failure rate without air
breaking strength and fatigue strength, the
quenching.
conditions for the welding sequence are also
 Air quenching of MFBW of the inside rail specified. For example the standard specifies
does not show any advantage. that
The superior strength of the flash butt welds
 The clamping devices that are used to
and the satisfactory results of the mobile
hold the rails firm should not cause any
electrical welding resulted in the
damage that might subsequently lead to
implementation of mobile flash butt welding as
the formation of cracks in the rail
a standard process on the main lines of the
 During the welding process it is not
American heavy haul railways.
permitted to interrupt the burn-off once the
process has begun
But still there is a demand for further
 Upsetting must be performed immediately
improvement to bring the failure rate of MFBW
with the sufficient upset force
down near zero.
 The excess upset must be trimmed
automatically and the weld must always be

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Rainer Wenty Improving In-Track Rail Welding
Plasser & Theurer

in compression during removal of the Alignment Class Class Class Class Class
excess upset material. of weld 1 2 3 4 5
Vertically at
 All welds must be carried out according to the running
+0,3 +0.4 +0.3 +0.3 +0.2
programmed and automatic sequences +0.1 0 -0.2 -0,15 -0.1
surface
 The welding parameters are determined Grinding Max. 400mm on
Max. 600mm
by means of welding tests and must not be length both sides
Horizontally +0.3
altered once approval has been given. at rail head 0
± 0.4 ± 0.5 ± 0.5 ± 0.5
Grinding Max. 400mm on
Max. 300mm
Table 3 for example shows the maximum length both sides
permitted offset of the rail ends after welding. Evenness of
running
surface
Position of the offset Maximum measured 0.15 0.20 0.20 0.15 0.10
permitted over the
offset grinding
Vertically in the centreline of the running 0.5 mm length
surface
Horizontally at the aligned head side or
Table 5: Geometrical tolerances in mm
the running edge, measured 14 mm below 0.5 mm
rail surface 4. THE NEW WELDING ROBOT
Horizontally on both edges of rail foot 2.0 mm
Table 3: Offset tolerance The requirements for increased quality to be
met by a mobile flash-butt welding process
The permitted tolerance of the weld bead after demanded further development of the existing
trimming is shown in Table 4 welding process. For the APT 1500 R welding
robot (Figure 4) the flash-butt welding process
Maximum was engineered from scratch.
Zone Position of bead bead
permitted transformers
Whole bead profile, from lower
and current pulling cylinder
edge of the head on the running
1 2.5 mm supply
edge side to the lower edge on
the opposite side
Treated surface at the underside
1+ 3.0 mm
of the head
Web, from the upper transition
2 radius down to start of the lower 2.5 mm
transition radius
Rail foot, including the outside
radii from web to rail foot edge
3
and the whole underside of the
2.0 mm trimming device
rail foot. auxiliary clamps
Table 4: Tolerance of weld bead after
trimming Figure 4: Welding robot APT 1500 R

Every new welding process has to be certified.
The approval tests have to be carried out on
weld samples of rail type (profile) 60E1 or
60E2 and steel quality R260. The samples
have to be tested by a certified body. The
main test phases are:
 Visual check
 Trimming and examination of weld bead
 Offset of rail ends
 Magnetic particle test or dye penetrant test
 Bending test
 Macro examination
 Micro examination
 Hardness test P -30HV30, +60HV30 P =
average measured hardness of the rail
before welding
 Fatigue strength test
Table 5 shows the limits of deviations in weld
geometry at ambient temperature
4.1. The Welding Process
An important advance is that the process of
aligning the rails has been included in the
automatic work sequence. In practical
operation this means that the welding robot
only has to be lowered onto the welding area.
Then the fully automatic work process begins,
starting with the height alignment of the rails.
To do this, the auxiliary clamps raise the rails
to the highest points and so immediately
achieve the required slight upward inclination.
The clamping jaws hold both rails firm. Four
distance transducers measure the exact
alignment of the top of the rail. After selecting
the running edge, there is an accurate lateral
alignment. The automatic aligning process is
now completed.

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Rainer Wenty Improving In-Track Rail Welding
Plasser & Theurer

After applying the current-carrying clamps, the welding of rails with high strength including
welding process commences with the unstable R400HT and bainitic rails. For the accelerated
phase. Any impurities are burned out of the rail cooling of head-hardened rails, there are
cross-sections. This is followed by the stable nozzles incorporated that supply a stream of
phase with a continuous input of current for a air directly to the area of the rail head.
uniform burn-off. After this within the
progressive phase there is an increase of Figure 5 shows a cooling diagram. Only with
current to burn out impurities such as air controlled delay of the cooling process the
inclusions or material defects. After completion perlite stage of the steel can be achieved.
of the progressive phase the upset stroke is
performed immediately and directly afterwards
the excess upset is trimmed off. During
trimming the weld is in compression as defined
in the standard, moreover all clamping jaws
remain closed and they additionally support
the rail as it cools. Pressure measurements in
the two pulling cylinders have also shown that
the trimming process has a negligible effect on
the forces applied. Afterwards, the current-
carrying clamps and the clamping jaws are
opened and the welding robot can be raised. A
welding report is compiled automatically by the
software from the parameters continually
recorded during the welding (Appendix 1).

The software was written by EN 50128-

certified programmers. Identification data are
entered for every weld such as line kilometre; Figure 5: Cooling curve, Cr-Mn steel
GPS coordinates of the position of the weld, marked light green
machine operator, date, etc. The welding
graphs (current intensity, advancing speed 4.4. Clamping Without Grinding Off the
and force versus time) are stored. Rolling Marks
4.2. Current Supply The clamping jaws are designed so that it is no
longer necessary to grind off the maker’s
Another special feature of the newly marks (rolling marks) on the rail web
developed welding robot is that it is the first in (Figure 6). This reduces the time needed to
the world to use a supply of alternating current prepare the two rail ends to be welded. The
with a mid-frequency of 1,000 Hz. This high current-carrying clamps are independent of the
frequency makes it possible to use very small clamping jaws.
transformers. The welding is powered by direct
current which means there is no other
dependency on the impedance of the electric
circuit. After rectification of the alternating
voltage, the high frequency produces a very
low residual ripple of the electric welding
voltage which has a very positive effect on the
welding quality.

4.3. Temperature Guidance of the Cooling-

Off Curve
The welding robot also has equipment for
temperature-guided cooling of the finished
weld according to time-temperature-
transformation (TTT) diagrams. This includes
the integrated, non-contacting temperature
measurement. High-alloy rails are cooled
down more slowly by applying post-heating
using current pulses so that no undesirable
microcrystalline structures form. This enables
Production sign
Figure 6: Trimmed weld with grinding
marks for electrodes
4.5. Integrated Closure Welding
Another advance in technology is the ability of
the APT 1500 R to perform closure welds
without an additional pulling device (see
Figure 7). There are several constructional

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Rainer Wenty Improving In-Track Rail Welding
Plasser & Theurer

features which facilitate this process, the three 5 CERTIFICATION OF THE WELDING
most important being: ROBOT
 the maximum pulling distance of 200 mm.
This enables closure welds to be The new welding robot has been successfully
performed under a wide variety of certified in Germany and Austria according to
conditions. EN14587-2. The test samples rails were to
 The tractive force, which at 1500 kN is UIC60E1 and UIC54E2 of rail grade R260.
very generous. The longitudinal forces The high standards required by EN14587-2
involved in closure welds are the friction were not only fulfilled, but surpassed by the
force necessary to pull the rails, the welding robot. Table 6 shows that the
stretching force caused by the minimum deflection should be 22 mm - the
temperature difference, and the upset achieved minimum was 37.3 mm. The
force. Calculations show that even rails up minimum break force should be 1600 kN - the
to a total length of 720 metre can be pulled minimum achieved was 1805 kN. Some of the
without difficulties. (one side 720 metre or probes did not even break.
360 metre each side of the welding head)
 The trimming process: trimming must be Rail
Weld
Weld Force Deflection cycle
carried out immediately after the upset Consumed.
time
stroke. Clamping jaws and trimming tools Nr. [kN] [mm] [mm] [s]
are therefore positioned so that it is
possible to trim the weld immediately after 1 1871 39.7 38 132
the upset stroke without having to open 2 1963 50.7 39 139
the clamping jaws. This fulfils an important 3 1805 39.1 41 133
requirement of the standard which states 4 1868 42.8 34 135
that the weld shall be in compression
5 1825 38.1 37 132
during removal of excess upset.
6 2000 52.9 36 130
7 2000 53 37 131
8 2000 57.8 35 140
9 2000 52.4 39 131
10 2000 53.8 36 131
11 1900 39.3 37 130
12 2000 49.4 34 131
13 1844 37.3 35 131
14 1846 38.9 35 142
15 2000 55 35 137
16 2000 58,9 33 130

Figure 7: APT 1500 RA performing a Mean 1932.6 47.4 36.3 133.4

closure weld
4.6. Closure Welding Using the Pulsation
Welding Process
The incorporated optional pulsation welding
process with uniformly oscillating rail ends
brings a number of advantages such as
shorter burn-off lengths and less time needed
for welding. The gap between the rail ends can
be very small compared to the standard
process. This enables closure welds to be
performed with minimal difference to the
neutral temperature and also reduces the
length of track where rail fastenings have to be
loosened.
Standard
Deviatio 77.2 7.8 2.2 3,9
n
Table 6: Test parameters of 16 weld
samples
5.1 Test Rig
To enable perfect adjustment of every welding
head, a bending test rig for up to 2000 kN test
force was erected in the manufacturing plant.
Table 6 shows the results of bending tests,
performed on samples that had been welded
by the standard method (non-pulsing). The
characteristic values for the welds which had
been produced by the standard method are

Mean value of bending force: 1932.6 kN

min. force required: 1600kN
Mean deflection value: 47.4 mm

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Plasser & Theurer

min. requirement: 22mm

Mean weld consumption: 36.3 mm
Mean welding time (for the cycle): 133.4 sec

5.2 Hardness

The hardness and the hardness pattern on the

rail surface is an important feature of a good
weld. Figure 8 shows a typical hardness
measurement of a rail, welded in standard
mode by the robot. The heat affected zone is
only 20 mm wide.

Figure 9: Track bound welding robot

The first road mobile machine was presented

at the iaf exhibition in Muenster in May 2013
Figure 8: Vickers hardness HV30 of a (Figure 10). A container machine will be
welding sample delivered to Algeria.

5.3. Pulse welding

For closure welds it is recommended to use

the pulsation welding method, it is faster and
the rail consumption is less. The pulsation
welding method does not use a continuous
burning phase but the current is induced in a Figure 10 : Rail-road going welding robot
pulsing mode. This enables higher levels of
current to be applied which brings a reduction
of material consumption and welding time. The
7 SUMMARY
pulsation welds are very strong. The mean
breaking load of a number of samples for a
Flash-butt welding is now performed as a fully
UIC60E1 rail is 1980 kN, but a greater number
automated process using very stable
of samples did not break because the force of
mechanical engineering and servo technology.
the rig is limited to 2000 kN. The mean
It provides high precision, optimised time
deflection is 53.4 mm and rail consumption
sequences of each phase of work, shorter
21.4 mm, a reduction of about 15 mm
burn-off lengths and greater strength of the
compared to the standard method. The
welds. This innovative technology offers the
welding time is reduced from 133.4 seconds to
features needed to meet the increased
only 85 seconds.
demands of heavy haul and high speed traffic.
6 MACHINE OPTIONS
REFERENCES
The demands on the basic machine design 1] IHHA 10th International Conference in New Delhi,
vary according to the mode of application. The February 4th-6th 2013
welding robot is built in three variants:
2] Haunold, F, The mobile flash butt welding machine K
355 PT at Austrian Federal Railways, EI Der
 Track bound machine (figure 9) Eisenbahningenieur, 9 (1978)
 Road mobile machine
 Container 3] Brave, G, FAST/HAL Rail Weld Performance;
Proceedings of Workshop on Heavy Axle Loads, Pueblo,
Colorado, October 14-17
(1990), 11-1…11-11

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Plasser & Theurer

Appendix 1: Graphical welding report and spread sheet with welding data

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