Significance of cracks in railway structures
Giovanni Pio Pucillo, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy
Davide Leonetti, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Keywords: fatigue crack growth, damage tolerant design, fatigue and failure assessment, structural reliability, condition-based maintenance, experimental and numerical methods
The proneness of railway infrastructure to fatigue damage has been a topic of research for decades, since the well-known work of Wöhler on the fatigue of railway axles. Enabling damage-tolerant design and maintenance strategies for structural components of the railway infrastructure, track, and vehicles requires knowledge of fracture and fatigue crack growth behavior for such components. In such approaches, it is assumed that intrinsic defects could grow under in-service loads, in order to define an appropriate inspection plan. The present symposium aims to gather scientific contributions regarding the study of crack paths in railway components and materials at different scales. This allows collecting and stimulating researchers involved in the assessment, characterization, prevention, and failure analysis of fatigue cracks in, but not limited to, railway tracks, rail, superstructure, bridges, and rolling stock material.