Tracks are the cornerstone of railway lines, covering rails, sleepers, connecting parts, ballast, and indispensable anti-climbing equipment and turnouts.
▲ The uniqueness of rails
Rail is the core of the track. It not only carries the weight of the train, but also plays a vital role in guiding the direction of the train. Its unique manufacturing process and material selection enable it to withstand huge pressure and friction, ensuring the safety and stability of the train during high-speed travel.
Functions and characteristics of rails: Rails play a vital role in the track system. It directly bears the weight of the train and its load transmitted by the wheels. At the same time, it guides the direction of the train through its precise geometric shape and stable physical properties. Its unique manufacturing process and material selection enable rails to withstand huge pressure and friction, ensuring the safety and stability of the train during high-speed travel.
Take a train consisting of 60 60-ton open cars as an example. The sum of its load and deadweight is as high as about 5,000 tons, not to mention those heavy-load trains weighing 10,000 tons or even hundreds of thousands of tons. Such weight will undoubtedly be all applied to the rails. Therefore, the rails must have excellent strength, stability and wear resistance to ensure the safety and stable operation of the train.
Rail section design: The cross-section of the rail is I-shaped, which consists of three main parts: the rail head, the rail waist and the rail bottom. This design not only has excellent force performance, but also effectively saves materials and shows the best bending resistance.
Rail classification: The strength and type of rails are usually expressed in kg/m. The heavier the weight of the rail per meter, the greater the load it can bear. For example, the weight of the rail used in the world's first railway was 18kg/m, while the heaviest rail is in the United States, weighing as much as 77kg/m.
At present, the rail standards used in my country are mainly 50kg/m, 60kg/m and 75kg/m. In order to improve the traffic capacity of railway lines, my country's railway department is gradually phasing out lighter rails and widely laying heavy rails of 60kg/m or 75kg/m on trunk lines.
