ania017 TK. Indian Institut of Technclogy Kanpur 1 Institute Departments Centres & Facilties International Relations. Alumni Faculty Research & Development Resources & Alumni Academics Students outreach Press Vigtlance Recruitments Amenities & Services Bus Schedule Bulletin Board ottice Oréers Tender ry of the Week PREV] ALL Building a New India: Corrosion- Resistant Rails for Indian Railways. Large funds are invested to upgrade and maintain railway track systems in India because of their importance in the transportation system of the country. One of the significant aspects of railway track maintenance is the detection of corrosion of rails and the replacement of corroded rails. Corrosion of rails causes huge economic loss because of frequent rail replacements. Further, rail failures due to corrosion affect the safety of commuters and disturb normal traffic. The economic cost due to corrosion of rails is very significant. The rails have 2 life of 800 gross rrllion tons, which works to approximately 12-13 years under normal traffic conditions in India. Corrosion reduces the life of rail to nearly half its expected life. The annual loss due to pre-replacement of corroded rails is significant (about Rs. 440 crores). A detailed alloy development activity was undertaken as a academia-industry- user (JIT Kanpur - Steel Authority of India - Indian Railways) collaborative research program, to invent a novel rail steel of relatively improved corrosion performance than the standard rail steel currently in use. This was one of the research projects of the Technology Mission on Railway Safety (TMRS), coordinated by Professor N. Vyas of the Mechanical Engineering Department and chaired by the Director of IIT Kanpur. The project "Corrosion Resistant Ralls” was headed by Professor R Balasubramaniam of the Materials and Metallurgical Engineering Department. The team members consisted of (Dr.) Bijayani Panda, Shruti Tiwari, Gopal Dwivedi, Abhijeet Moon, (Dr.) Sujata Mahapatra, (Dr.) A.C. Vajpei of IIT Kanpur, A.K. Manuwal of Research Designs and’ Standards Organization, Indian Railways, Lucknow, (Or.) A. Bhattacharya and K. Srikanth of Research and Development Centre for Iron and Steel, Steel Authority of India, Ranchi, and RK. Rathi of Steel Melting Shop and Research Control Laboratory, Bhilai Steel Plant, Bhilai (see Fig. 1). Some highlights of the work will be given in this story. Some background to the rail system in India and the causes for corrosion in case of Indian rails will be first highlighted. itptwwitkac.ininfocelitnevaimistonjtnewest6.him 18sia017 IK. Indian Institut of Technclogy Kanpur Figure 1: Team members during meeting at IIT Kanpur on 10 February 2006 to finalize alloy compositions for laboratory study Rail System in India Indian Railways is the second largest railroad in the world under a single management, running more than 11,000 trains every day, 7,000 of which are for passengers. The network comprises 108,706 km and ferries 14 million passengers daily from 6,853 stations across the length and breadth of the country. The number of people traveling in trains in India is almost equal to populations of several small countries in the world! The most important component of the rail system is the rail. The standard length of rail in India is 13 m afthough 26mrIong rails are also used at some locations. The rails are welded by aluminothermic welding process. The latest trend is manufacture of longer rails, for which the largest manufacturer of rails in India, the Bhilai Steel Plant of ‘the Steel Authority of India (SAIL), has recently commissioned a long rail unit capable of producing rails of total length 130m (and 260m) by flash butt welding. The normal rails are made of steel containing 0.7- 0.7% carbon (C) and 1% manganese (Mn), which are called as C-Mn rail steel From a strength perspective (ultimate tensile strength of 880 MPa or 90 kg/mmr?), the C-Mn rail is popularly known as 90 UTS rail or Grade 880 ral The second component of the rail track is the pre reinforced concrete sleeper. The heavier weight of concrete sleepers provides more stability to the entire track structure, A grooved rubber pad is placed between the rail and the sleeper and this pad provides insulation, absorbs vibrations and impact, and also increases the coefficient of friction between the rail and the sleeper. The third component is the rail fastening system that is used to fasten the rails, to the sleepers, Modem fasteners are elastic fastenings which allow for dampening of the itptwwitkac.ininfocelitnevaimistonjtnewest6.him 28sia017 TK Indian Institut of Technology Kanpur Figure 2: Schematic of fastening system used in the Indian Railways Figure 3: Photograph of the rail fastening system. vibrations. The rails are clamped on to the sleepers using the fastening system, which is ilustrated in the schematic of Fig. 2. Anyone who has traveled in Indian Railways would have noticed this (see Fig. 3). A cast iron insert is cast inside the sleeper. The leg of an elastic rail clip (ERC) is then inserted in the cast iron insert. This ERC keeps the rail anchored to the sleeper by applying load on the foot of the rail. It does not directly touch the rail, but on a liner. The liner prevents the rail foot from getting damaged due to Impact from the elastic rail clip. The liners used by Indian Railways are either made of mild steel or glass filled nylon, The nylon liner is increasingly being used by Indian Railways because, apart from the normal requirements, it also provides insulation of the electrified rails. The important location between the liner and rail foot is prone to a dangerous form of localized corrosion known as crevice corrosion. It is important to understand the forms of corrosion that affect rails and the causes. Form of Corrosion in In \n Rails Corrosion can be defined as degradation of an engineering material (generally, metals) due to an electrochemical reaction with the environment. Generally, there are different forms of corrosion and it is important to understand the type of corrosion so that suitable preventive measures can be taken. itptwwitkac.ininfocelitnevaimistonjtnewest6.him 38sia017 IK Indian Insti o Technclogy Kanpur The most common form of corrosion of rails is atmospheric corrosion. The residence time of moisture on the surface, and the frequency of wetting and drying determine the severity of atmospheric corrosion. Corrosion will be more severe for longer moisture residence time and more frequent wetting and drying. The “good” feature of atmospheric corrosion is that the resulting corrosion is, generally uniform in nature. Atmospheric corrosion of rails does not really pose 2 safety problem However, econorric loss due to corrasion is still an issue since fone would like to delay rail replacement as much 2s possible. Pollutants and contaminants in the environment dictate the severity of atmospheric corrosion Uniform corrosion will be aggravated in the presence of chloride Ions because they destabllze the protective rusts on the surface. For this reason, rails lald near coastal regions are more prone to atmospheric corrosion, warranting more frequent replacement than rails in a dry climate. Of far more importance, from both economic and safety perspectives, is the enhanced corrosion that takes place at certain localized locations (generally termed localized corrosion). There are two origins for localized corrosion in Indian rails. The first cause of localized corrosion is due to leakage of current in electrified railway systems. Intense corrosion attack takes place at the location where the electrons leave (or positive current enters) the track, This is known as stray current corrosion. This can be usually solved by proper design of the railway electrification system. Therefore, this problem is related more to design than material aspects The second problem is localized corrosion under the liners, leading to thinning of rail foot under the liners. The end result is premature failure of the rails, which is a great safety concer because this is a major cause of rail failure. Intense corrosion takes place that these locations (i.e. under the liner) due to collection of moisture from the atmosphere and discharge from the open lavatories of the Indian coaches. The second reason is quite unique to India. Long distance trains fare quite common in India. Therefore, longer travel times invariably result in discharge from lavatories, Figure 4: Crevice corrosion can be noted at the location underneath the metal liner in C-Mn rail coated with four coats of epoxy paint, The metal liner and the elastic rail clip have been removed and can also be seen in this figure. The discharge only affects the rail foot locations facing the inside of the track (called guage side) and not the locations on the non-guage side. Figure 4 shows 2 typical rail foot region, below the metal liner, affected by this form of corrosion, The various components that make up the rail fastening system can also be seen. The form of corrosion that is noted below the metal liner is commonly referred to as crevice corrosion. A crevice is defined as any location in the system where the access to the corrosive environment is restricted, This creates oxygen concentration cells. The region where oxygen is depleted (i.e. inside the crevice) becomes anodic with respect to the rest of the exposed material. This leads to intense attack at the crevice location because the electrons demanded from the large cathodic area outside the crevice is supported by electrons supplied from the small anodic area within the crevice by the anodic corrosion reaction of metal converting to metal ions. The process is autocatalytic and more titanic acininfoclitenovntrlstorjstnewesk6d.tem 48,sia017 IK Indian Insite o Technclogy Kanpur importantly, the attack is not easily visible to the naked eye. Crevice corrosion is accelerated in the presence of chloride ions, which are present in environments near sea coasts as well as in discharge from the tollets of passenger trains. Combating Corrosion Corrosion of rails is one of the major causes for early replacement of rails in India and therefore, It needs to be combated. Corrosion prevention methods are required for the two forms of corrosion (described above) that affect Indian rails. There is really no ready-made solution for atmospheric corrosion (one cannot modify the prevailing atmosphere!) and therefore the rails in corrosion-prone locations, ike near the sea coast, are replaced more frequently than rails in dry locations. Combating crevice corrosion at the liner location is trickier. In the case of in~ service rails, the location undemeath the liner must be prevented from coming into contact with the environment. The simple corrosion control philosophy, in this case, will be to apply a protective coating on the surface so that the environment will not flow into the crevice. With this aim, extensive field trials, were conducted by Indian Railways at a corrosion-prone location near Vishakapatnam to check the efficacy of different coatings. The team from IIT Kanpur visited the location for appraisal of the different methods used to prevent corrosion (see Fig. 5). Polymeric coatings were not effective due to their degradation in the atmospheric environment. The crevice corrosion noted in Figure 4 is an example when four coats of epoxy were applied at the liner location, The localized corrosion is still severe. Figure 5: Field Visit to Vishakhapatanam in October 2005 The field trials further revealed that the best performance was noted in the case of rails that were coated with zinc. Coating with zinc is commercially termed as galvanizing. Protection is offered by the zinc coating by acting as a barrier and as a sacrificial anode (cathodic protection). Therefore, coating the rail foot with zinc coating may be an effective method to combat crevice corrosion at this location. This, of course, is a costly option. There are two ways to coat the susceptible rail foot location with zinc. The first method is to selectively coat the locations where the liners will make contact, by using cold sprayed zinc coatings. This can be done quite easily in the field with minimum heavy-duty equipment, unlike the case for hot sprayed zinc coatings. However, this may lead to problems in actual implementation as it would involve enormous co- ordination men and material at the ground level, with its own attendant administrative problems. Therefore, a better option would be to locate the zinc coating unit such that rail foot location is coated at the place where rails are handled in large quantities. Coating the rail with zinc as soon as it leaves the rolling mill at the rail manufacturing site is one option. However, the rails have to be welded and therefore there would be disruption in the zinc coating at the weld locations. With this in mind, it is possible to envisage that zinc coating can be performed when the rail leaves the welding plant. Further, it would be more titanic acininfoclitenovntrlstorjstnewesk6d.tem 58sia017 TK. Indian Institut o Technclogy Kanpur economical to coat only the rail foot of rails using hot spraying method rather than hot dip galvanizing. A major advantage of coating zinc by hot spraying is, that only the rail foot location needs to be coated and not the entire rail, A different way of approaching this problem is by developing corrosion resistant rails of new chemistry that will resist corrosion better than rail steel! currently in use. It is clear at the outset that the term “corrosion resistant” does not imply that there will be no corrosion. If that is required, then one has to go for rails, made of made of extremely costly and expensive rraterials like stainless steel. The meaning of the term “corrosion resistant” in this case is that corrosion will be delayed and in this way, the life of rails can be extended. Development of Novel Rail Compositions Alloy development of new rail steel to resist corrosion is confirmed to be a viable altemative. The effect of minor amounts of alloying elements on corrosion of steel is known and there are only a few elements that can be added to steel to improve its resistance to corrosion, like Cr, Ni, Cu, Si, Mo, P, etc, Tt is also well known that even small amounts of alloying additions can drastically alter and affect corrosion resistance, lke in the case of phosphorus content in the Delhi Iron Pillar [2]. Given the resistance to localized corrosion offered by Mo, a novel rail steel, which was microalloyed with Cu and Mo additions, was developed by SAIL some time ago. The typical composition of Cu-Mo steel is 0.69C-0.24Cu- 0.18Mo. This rail steel did show promise in field trials, but the high cost of Mo in the Cu-Mo rail steels was an economic disadvantage. In developing the new rail steel, it was important to keep the price of alloying element in mind, In this regard, chromium and copper are cheap as well as, abundant. Trial experiments were conducted on different combinations of minor alloying elements were added to determine the synergistic effect of these elements on the corrosion behavior of rail steel. The philosophy of arriving at these chemical compositions has been discussed elsewhere [2]. It was important to add the optimum amount of these microalloying elements such that they remain in solid solution and provide corrosion resistance. At the same time, the effect of these alloying additions on the mechanical properties and processing of rails had also to be considered in the design of compositions. Trial rail steel! plates of several different compositions were processed at Research and Development Centre for Iron and Steel, Steel Authority of India, Ranchi using the same rolling parameters as used in the processing of rails at Bhilai Stee! Plant. A wide variety of tests were performed to assess the performance of the novel rail compositions, in particular the localized corrosion resistance. It was noted that all the novel compositions exhibited a pearlitic structure and that most of them possessed the required mechanical properties as per the IRS-T-12 specification [3]. The corrosion Figure 6: Visit to RDCIS, Ranchi on 9 January 2006 behavior of the rail sarrples were evaluated in a wide variety of environment itptwwitkac.ininfocelitnevaimistonjtnewest6.him 68sia017 TK Indian Insti o Technclogy Kanpur using different techniques ike liner polarization, Tafel extrapolation, potentiodynaric polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. In acidic and near neutral conditions, the rates of corrosion of all the alloys were similar [4] and therefore one could not judge the effectiveness of the alloying addition. In order to differentiate between the alloys, sarmples were subjected to altemate wetting and drying and the surface layers forming on these alloys were evaluated by impedance spectroscopy. It was revealed in these studies that the alloy containing Cr, Cu and Ni [5]. In addition, fretting wear studies also indicated superior resistance of this composition compared to other compositions [6]. Experimental results obtained from IIT Kanpur, SAIL RDCIS and RDSO were analyzed in great detail (see Fig. 7). In view of the improved corrosion performance, the rail steel containing microalloying additions of 0.60% chromium, (0.40% copper and 0.20% nickel was recommended for trial rail manufacture. Figure 7: Meeting at IIT Kanpur on 16 April 2007 to discuss final ‘experimental results NCC Stee} Figure 8: Surface condition of C-Mn, Cu-Mo and NCC rail pieces after six months of salt fog exposure showing the lower rusting in the case of NCC rail steel. Based on the recommendation, 120 tons of 0.60Cr~-0.40Cu-0.20Ni rails were processed at Bhilai Steel Plant in June 2007 and 50 tons were welded and laid over a 0.5 km track in the Vijayawada-Gudur section. Another 500 tons of these rails were also processed and laid in East Coast Railways. Recently, in April 2009, titanic acininfoclitenovntrlstorjstnewesk6d.tem 78sia017 TK Indian Insti o Technclogy Kanpur Indian Railways has ordered a substantial amount (10000 tons) of the new rail steel for more detailed field studies spread over a larger region. Further, the Cr~ Cu-Ni rail composition has been incorporated in the Indian rail standard IRS-T12 specification, recently. Long term testing of rails in a simulated environment corrosion chamber has confirmed the superior corrosion resistance of the Cr-Cu- Ni rail (see Fig. 8). It is anticipated that the use of these novel rails will result in enormous cost savings for India as well as lead to improved rail safety [7] References [1] R. Balasubramaniam, On the corrosion resistance of the Delhi Iron Pillar, Corrosion Science, 2000, 42, 2103-2129, [2] 8. Panda, On the Corrosion of Novel Rall Steels, PhD Thesis, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, 2008. [31 B. Panda, R. Balasubramaniam and A.P. Moon, Microstructure and mechanical properties of novel rail steels, Materials Science and Technology, 2009, accepted. [4] B. Panda, R. Balasubramaniam, G. Dwivedi and S. Mahapatra, Corrosion of Novel rail steels in 3.5% NaCl solution, Transactions of the Indian Institute of Metals, 2008, 61, 177-181. [5] 8. Panda, R. Balasubramaniam and G. Dwivedi, On the corrosion behaviour of, novel high carbon rail steels in simulated cyclic wet-dry salt fog conditions, Corrosion Science, 2008, 50, 1684-1692 [6] 8. Panda, R. Balasubramaniam and S. Mahapatra, Fretting wear behaviour of novel rail steels, unpublished research, 2008. (7] httos//www_ hindu, com/thehindu/hoinus/008200905081451.htm Professor R Balasubramaniam Department of Materials and Metallurgical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208 016. Email: bala@iitk.ac.in URL: http://home jtk.ac.in/~bala "Search « Directory « Webmaster « Sitemap = Hindi Version titanic acininfoclitenovntrlstorjstnewesk6d.tem 38.