Project Outline
Help build quieter, more reliable urban railways through optimization and better maintenance of modern rail steels.
This 4 year studentship is part of a collaboration between University of Sheffield and British Steel focused on improved performance of railway rail steels. Rail plays a vital role in urban transport and decarbonisation of the UK economy, but noise can affect railway neighbours if the rail-wheel system is not performing well.
Rail head corrugation is a phenomenon that can cause excessive noise, vibration and maintenance requirements in railways – degrading reliability, impacting passenger experience and reducing quality of life for nearby residents. It results from dynamic rail-wheel contact forces that drive wear and plastic flow of the steels. Since initial understanding of rail corrugation was developed, rail steels have gotten harder, and automated driving for metro systems has changed the demands on the rails with acceleration and deceleration taking place in highly consistent locations. It is therefore not well understood how to prevent the problem.
Further project information
The planned project will involve working together with railway experts and steel manufacturers to develop new understanding of the root causes of rail corrugation for modern steel chemistries in these new challenging conditions, and how this rail degradation process can be prevented. The work will focus in the following areas:
- Visiting railways to take on-site noise data measurements, correlating these with rail surface roughness and track support conditions, aiming to understand why some combinations are inherently better than others.
- Using vehicle dynamics modelling to better understand the dynamics of rail and wheel which is the source of excitation leading to the earliest stages of damage on a newly installed rail.
- Linking the surface forces to microstructural response for a range of steel grades. This will help understand whether material choices or rail cross-section choice offer viable routes to noise mitigation.
- Improving mitigation techniques such as rail grinding, building on recently completed PhD research in Sheffield. There are trade-offs in this maintenance process between surface finish, thermal input, material removal and the speed of operation achieved. Currently the speed of operation is the primary objective, sometimes leaving surfaces which rapidly degrade back to the rough/corrugated state.
This project offers the dual benefits of a vibrant interdisciplinary research community in Sheffield, and opportunity to spend time in an industry setting at British Steel. Sheffield and British Steel are members of the UKRRIN Network (UK Rail Research Innovation Network) and the IGNITE Green-steel for Net-zero network, giving excellent connections to research colleagues in the UK and internationally.
Subject areas
- Railway Engineering
- Engineering
- Mathematics
- Physics
- Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- Manufacturing Engineering
- Materials science
- Metallurgy
- Systems Engineering
Required technical skills/academic qualifications/experience
Applicants should have a 2.1 or higher in an undergraduate degree or a master’s degree in engineering, materials, mathematics, or physics – but applicants with enthusiasm to learn about the railways and with any quantitative background are encouraged to apply.
We are committed to building a diverse research community and welcome applicants from a range of groups under-represented in academia. The project team will include women and LGBT+ people, and the research group has welcomed students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds.
We particularly encourage applications from women and other groups under‑represented in research. All appointments will be made on merit.
Mode of attendance
Successful applicants are expected to register as full-time students. However, eligible UK home fees applicants may request to be considered for part-time mode of attendance by the supervisory team.
Supervisors
Project Partners
This project will be hosted at the University of Sheffield with support from British Steel.
