Division of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal – 462 051, India
*Corresponding author: Email: s.srivastava.msme@gmail.com
Online published on 7 April, 2014.
The corrosion of rail results in heavy economic loss, apart from being a major concern. In order to minimise the corrosion related problem new micro-alloy rail steels were developed namely Cu-Mo and Cr-Cu-Ni based compositions, by the addition of micro alloying elements. In the present investigation, three different steels were evaluated for corrosion resistance after subjecting for material to Advanced Cyclic Fog Chamber (Atlax CCX Corrosion Exposure System US) for six months. The rust so derived from the head portion of the different rails were characterized by various techniques like powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with a view to examine the nature of the corrosion products and estimate the protectiveness of the rust scales. Based on the details of the phase analysis and micro-structural features, it has been concluded that Cr-Cu8-Ni rail steel rust shows more protective than that of the other rail steels
Rail steel, corrosion rust, characterization, protectiveness
