An X-ray Study on Texture Caused by Rolling Contact

Rolling contact loading causes a remarkable plastic flow at the contact surface of rail and wheel or the surface of a pair of disks rotating under normal force. It is supposed that significant residual stress, work hardening and preferred orientation will be introduced as well as the plastic flow, and the combination of all of those factors may cause the fatigue damage to the specimen. In the present study, the mode of plastic flow and the preferred orientation with respect to the tangential force, or slip at the contact region were measured. The experimental results were nearly the same for both laboratory tested disk specimen and a used rail. The distribution of degree of plastic flow showed good agreement with the work hardening of the flowed region, besides the mode of plastic flow is nearly the same as the calculated result. The major texture component at the flowed region was near (111) [11¯0] and near (111) [112¯] which are the major components of cold rolling texture being formed by the combination of compressive stress and weak shear stress.