The steady state wear behaviour of pearlitic rail steel under dry rolling-sliding contact conditions

The present study is aimed at studying the onset of steady state wear behaviour of pearlitic rail steel. Wheel-rail contact is simulated by a rolling-sliding line contact. The results show that steady state wear rate prevails after a certain number of rolling-sliding cycles. The effect of strain hardening and uni-directional plastic strain accumulation on the wear behaviour has also been studied. It has been shown that the start of the steady state wear rate coincides with the cessation of plastic strain accumulation and additional strain hardening. The ratchetting failure mechanism has been employed to explain this coincidence.