Rail corrosión

Steel is always trying to get back to its native state (Iron oxide)[Why] and so. How fast
this happends depends on its enviroment. (What factors?)

In rail industry, the steel used has some sort of corrosión protection. For instance,
galvanised, paint protection, oil inmersión, between others. The most general
exception to this rule is the rail itself.

In the majority of UK cases the rail will usually be replaced due to wear or rolling
contanct fatigue before requires replacement due to corrosion, so protection in this
case is unnecessary. However, as operating enviroments vary significantly, this is not
always the case.

The rate of rail corrosion is highly dependent on the operating enviroment. There are
several factors that accelerate corrosion vastly; the most common are water and salt.

Where these are present in áreas such as coastal tracks, wet tunnels or level crossing,
rail life may become determined by this accelerated corrosion. When this becomes the
case, corrosion-protection of rails becomes vital to optimise the rail life.

Failures modes

There are essentially two forms of corrosion-related rail failure. Rail gall is a general
loss of rail section (usually affecting the foot), but is usually more severe under rail
clips/fastenings due to the localised environment here (water trap with abrasion from
the clip/insulator).

Foot fatigue results from the combined effect corrosion and fatigue. A corrosion pit
forms on the foot of rail and under traffic a fatigue crack can grow from this defect,
ultimaly causing complete rail failure. This can be one of the most problematic form of
corrosion induced failure, due to the fact that it cannot be measured. Corrosion pits
usually form on the rail foot (an area that can’t be seen or inspected), and in high load
areas the pit only needs to be a few millimetres deep to start generating a fatigue
crack.

The resulting crack is virtually undetectable via current in-track monitoring

techniques, meaning control of this issue is problematic.

As the industry moves towards increasing rail life further by the use of more wear and
rolling contact fatigue resistant rail steels, the proportion of rail replacement due to
corrosion will likely increase unless we address this by adding protection where
appropriate.

So how can we protect the rails against corrosion? – There are essentially two ways to
prevent corrosion of steel.
Barrier coatings

Barrier coatings comprises any barrier to stop the atmosphere/enviroment reaching

the steel surface, in other words, A barrier coating is applied to the rail.

There are two drawbacks to this approach. The first, any damage to the coating means
that this area is unprotected and will corrode fast, or indeed even faster, than if no
coating was present. The second is that such coatings are usually unsuited to use
where stray currents exist.

Sacrificial protection

Another way to protect the steel is applying a sacrificial coating. This corrodes in
preference to the steel (so protecting it at the same time). This is why overhead line
poles and many street lamps are galvanised. The zinc coating corrodes (slowly), in
preference to the steel.

Real rail protection

The environment provides some unique challenges to providing corrosion protection

for rails:

» Impact resistance – Passing vehicles can hurl ballast at the rails, so an impact
resistant coating is needed to prevent excessive damage;
» Damage tolerance – Almost inevitably something, somewhere will manage to breach
the coating. Damage may be from ballast or damage from installation or maintenance
operations such as damage from tamper tines;
» Stray current protection – Stray currents third/fourth rail operations as well as
overhead, external or even some signalling current sources can cause rapid corrosion
to most barrier coatings;
» Abrasion – Coatings are subject to abrasion and erosion particularly where
clips/insulators or other track furniture contact the rail;
» Removal – For maintenance and installation purposes the coating needs to be
removable (and indeed replaceable) in order to facilitate track welding.