RR 61001: Railway Engineering I

Module 3: Creep, Wear and Fatigue

in Rails; Jointed and Welded Rails

Arghya Deb
Department of Civil Engineering
 Brittle Fracture: Basics of LEFM
•Fracture mechanics describes the process of initiation and propagation of
cracks in a solid.

•Linear elastic fracture mechanics assumes that the material in which

cracking is occurring has linear elastic material behaviour.

• In a linear elastic material a crack may originate due to many reasons, the
existence of pre-existing flaws being one prime reason.

•At the location of a flaw, stress concentrations occur. If the flaw geometry
can be idealized to be that of a crack with planar faces and a sharp crack
front (crack tip in 2D), mathematical analysis of the problem becomes
possible.

•In that case the complex potential theory of elasticity can be used to obtain
the near tip stress field. 2
 Basics of LEFM
• The magnitude of the stress concentration at the crack tip is described by
the stress intensity factor K.

•The actual stress field at a point near the crack tip is described in terms of
the stress intensity factor K times a geometric term that describes the location
of the point.
KI
σ ij = f ij (θ )
2πr

σ ij
σ
r

a
σ 3
 Brittle Fracture: Basics of LEFM
• The magnitude of the stress intensity factor K depends on the loading and
the geometry of the cracked specimen.

•The crack starts propagating when the stress intensity factor K becomes
equal to the critical stress intensity factor Kc which is a material property and
is also known as the fracture toughness of the material.

• A crack can propagate in 3 distinct modes: due to pure tension loading

(Mode I), due to in-plane shear loading (Mode II) or due to out-of-plane shear
loading (Mode III).

•The expressions for the stress intensity factors in each of these three modes
are typically different i.e.
K I  K II  K III

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Basics of LEFM

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 Basics of LEFM
•An alternative but ultimately equivalent approach to understanding brittle
fracture is based on Griffith’s fracture energy criterion.

•The growth of a crack requires the creation of two new surfaces and hence
an increase in the surface energy (  )

•The increase in surface energy is supplied by the stored elastic potential

energy (strain energy) in the uncracked region surrounding the crack.

•According to Griffith, crack propagation occurs when the available stored

potential energy becomes equal to the surface energy necessary for creating
additional cracked faces.

• This critical value of the stored potential energy is known as the critical
fracture energy. Thus for crack propagation:
Gc  2 6
 Yielding and ductile failure
•If the stresses, in either compression or tension are in excess of the yield
stress, plastic flow would occur at point A.
•Over time the plastic deformations accumulate. When they exceed the
ductile limit, crack initiation occurs.

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 Ductile failure: strain localization
• Ductile failure is preceded by strain localization. A uniformly stressed
specimen will initially deform uniformly.

•However at a critical stress (or strain) the strains will start localizing. In a
localized region, there will be large accumulation of plastic strain, while
elsewhere the specimen may actually unload (i.e. the strains may
reduce).

• An example is necking in cylindrical specimens: the strains in the

necked region increase rapidly and quickly lead to failure.

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 Ductile failure: strain localization
• It can be shown that the maximum load in the load displacement curve
corresponds to the onset of unstable necking behaviour (localization of
strains)

• Plastic localization occurs because of mainly two reasons: geometric

softening and material instability.

• In a cylindrical steel specimen loaded in uniaxial tension, for example,

necking failure occurs due to geometric softening; as the specimen is
stretched, locally the cross sectional area of the specimen reduces at
locations where a geometric imperfection exists.

• Material instability refers to the tendency of certain materials to soften at

large strains e.g. due to void growth in porous materials at large strains.

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 Fatigue
•In addition, cyclic loading – due to stress reversals – may cause fatigue
failure.

• Fatigue failure occurs under cyclic loading. Cyclic loading involves

subjecting a specimen to repeated loadings and unloadings sequentially.

• After a large number of such cycles, the specimen may fail at stresses
smaller than the short term static strength.

•The stress referred to above is usually the maximum or minimum stress

during the cycle.

•There are two distinct types of fatigue failure: that due to high cycle
fatigue and due to low cycle fatigue.
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 High Cycle versus Low Cycle Fatigue
• During high cycle fatigue the maximum stress during the stress cycles
never exceeds the yield stress. Typically fatigue failure occurs after several
million cycles of loading.

•However if the maximum stress during a cycle is less than a certain

threshold value, no degradation in strength is seen even after cyclic
loading over tens of millions of cycles. This typically occurs in ferrrous
alloys and titanium.

•The threshold stress below which cyclic loading does not result in fatigue
failure is known as the “endurance limit”

•If the maximum stress is above the endurance limit, during every cycle at
locations where there are stress concentrations (e.g. grain interfaces)
microscopic cracks (sub-critical cracks) increase by a very small amount.11
 HCF: S-N curves
• After a very large number of cycles, once the crack reaches critical size, the
crack will propagate suddenly and the structure will fracture.

•For cycles with a constant alternating stress, with reduction in the magnitude
of the alternating stress, the number of cycles to failure increase

•This is shown by S-N curves where either the stress amplitude or the ratio of
the maximum stress to the short term static strength (S) is plotted against N
(the number of cycles to failure).

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 HCF: Range of loading
• The number of cycles to failure not only depends on the magnitude of
the alternating stress during the cycle.

• It also depends on the mean stress during the cycles, the mode of the
maximum and minimum stress, as well as the range (the range being
the difference between the maximum and minimum stress).

• The mode of the maximum and minimum stress indicates whether the
stress is compressive or tensile, or whether the loading is uniaxial or
flexural.

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 HCF: Goodman Diagram
• This information is sometimes presented in a Goodman Diagram.
1
• Both the magnitude of the mean stress  mean  ( max  min )
2
and alternating stress  alt  ( max  mean) influence the fatigue life.

• Mean stresses and alternating stresses interact to determine the fatigue

life.

• The combined influence of both on fatigue life is captured by an

empirical equation proposed by Goodman:

 mean
 alt   fat  (1  )
 static
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HCF: Goodman Diagram

 alt

 fat
FATIGUE
FAILURE

SAFE

 static  mean

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 Low Cycle Fatigue
• Low cycle fatigue failure typically occurs in fewer number of cycles – tens
of thousands to hundred thousand cycles.

•The maximum stress in the cycle exceeds the yield stress: during each
cycle plastic deformation occurs. During each cycle the plastic strain
changes by a certain amount, say Δεpl

•After say N loading cycles, the repeated plastic straining is sufficient to

cause ductile failure. Naturally N depends on the magnitude of Δεpl

•Unlike HCF, in LCF strains rather than stresses are used in the fatigue
failure model.

•Assuming small strains the strain amplitude during a cycle can be split
into elastic and plastic components:
 a   el   pl 16
Low Cycle Fatigue: Stabilized Hysteresis loop

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 LCF
• The number of cycles to failure depends on the amplitudes of the
elastic strain and plastic strains in a stabilized hysteresis loop, though
somewhat differently.

• Morrow proposed the following relation between the strain at failure and
the number of cycles to failure:
 f
 a    
el
a
pl
a  (2 N )b   f (2 N )c
E
 ael : elastic strain amplitude,  apl : plastic strain amplitude

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 LCF
• The intercepts of the two straight lines at 2N = 1 are log(  f / E ) for the
elastic component and log(  f ) for the plastic component.  f is the
fatigue strength coefficient and  f is the fatigue ductility coefficient.

• At large strains or short lives (small N), the plastic strain component is
predominant. At small strains or long lives (large N) the elastic strain
component is predominant.

• The number of cycles where the elastic and plastic components of the
strain at fatigue failure are equal is called the transition fatigue life Nt:

 f E 1
2Nt  ( ) b c
 f

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 Coffin – Manson formula for LCF
• Coffin & Manson also proposed a design rule for low cycle fatigue.

• For the elastic part, the relationship between the elastic strain
amplitude and fatigue life was approximated by:
u
 ael  1.75 E
N 0.12 where 𝜎𝑢 is the ultimate tensile strength

• For the plastic part, the relationship


between the plastic strain
amplitude and fatigue life can be approximated by:

 apl  0.5( u )0.6 N 0.6 where 𝜀𝑓 is the fracture strain

• This yields the Coffin-Manson relationship governing LCF failure:
u
 a  1.75 E
N 0.12  0.5( u ) 0.6 N 0.6
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 Loads acting on tracks: Vertical Loads
• Vertical loads comprises quasi-static as well as dynamic loads.
• The quasi-static load mainly comprises the static wheel load which
comprises half the static axle load, measured on a straight horizontal
track.
• However in portions of the track which are curved additional vertical
loads can arise.
• These can be due to centrifugal forces. Recall that the super-elevation
of the railway track balances centrifugal forces acting on the vehicle:
F cosθ
W sinθ
W sin   F cos  sin  E G

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 Loads acting on tracks: Vertical Loads
• However this component of the centrifugal force also causes a
moment, M = F cos θ ×H at the top surface of the rails.
• To balance this moment the reaction force on the rails may need to
increase by as much as M/G = F cos θ × H /G
• This force will add to the reaction force acting on the rails due to the
static axle load: (W cos θ)/2
• Similarly wind loads U acting on the outer rail in curves may also
increase the vertical reaction forces at rails, as in the following figure,
by U cos θ × D/G

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 Stresses due to Vertical Loads
• In addition there may be dynamic vertical loads from wheel
components such sprung masses, unsprung masses, corrugations,
welds and wheel flats.

• Analysis as a beam on a Winker foundation:

(i) Infinitely long rail on elastic foundation with coefficient ‘k’ N/m2
(ii) Loaded by a single wheel load at x = 0

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