A Thesis Submitted to the School of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Masters of Science in Railway Engineering

Wheel and rail is one of the most important material used to support and guide rail vehicle safely
and smoothly. Since wheel and rail suffers from various interacting mechanical and thermal
forces, friction modifiers, various contaminants and environmental atmosphere, wear poses large
problem on wheel and rail.
Wheel and rail wear can be result in an extensive cost for truck owner, if it is not predicated and
prevented in an efficient way. To limit these costs, one measure is to predicate and prevent wheel
and rail wear through wear modeling.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of heat treating both wheel and rail at
the same time on rolling/sliding wear of wheel and rail.
The rolling/sliding wear of three pair of rollers used to model wheel and rail material is studied
using twin disc rolling/sliding wear testing machine. The three pair of rollers used in this study is
manufactured from carbon steel having similar hardness and chemical composition as that of
standard wheel and rail. Then the two pair of rollers is heat treated in an electric furnace to
improve their hardness. Heat treatment was done by heating the rollers to austenite temperature,
holding at that temperature for 45minutes for uniform temperature distribution. Water or air plus
oil are used as cooling median.