Investigation on Wear Resistance and Fatigue Damage of Laser Cladding Coating on Wheel and Rail Materials under the Oil Lubrication Condition

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study is to investigate the wear resistance and fatigue spalling damage of wheel and rail materials with and without laser cladding coating under oil lubrication using a rolling–sliding machine. It illustrates that the laser cladding Co-based alloy coating improves the wear resistance of wheel and rail rollers. Serious spalling is dominant for untreated wheel and rail rollers. The wheel or rail roller undergoing laser cladding treatment takes on slight abrasive wear and visible ploughing. Furthermore, there are no cracks on the contact surface and subsurface. The laser cladding Co-based alloy coating exhibits outstanding resistance to wear and fatigue spalling damage due to its microstructure in the coating under oil lubrication.

KEYWORDS:

• Laser cladding coating
• wear
• fatigue crack
• wheel–rail materials

Acknowledgment

The authors are grateful to the reviewers for valuable technical advice and kind help in improving the English text of the article.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51174282 and No. 51475393) and Sichuan Province Science and Technology Support Program (No. 2014GZ0009-6).