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JFE Steel Develops Wear-Resistant Head-Hardened Premium Rail
Apr. 15, 2010 JFE Steel Corp. announced the development of “SP3” (Super Pearlite Type 3), a new state-of-the-art rail offering what the company claims is the world’s highest level of wear resistance for heavy-haul railway lines.
Wear-resistant rail is widely used outside Japan, especially in the United States, mainly for freight tracks used for transporting heavy commodities like coal and grain.
It is especially beneficial on curved portions of track where centrifugal forces accelerate the rate of wear.
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SP3 features an ultra-fine metal structure that results in unprecedented wear resistance. JFE Steel achieves the ultra-fine structure by optimized chemical-composition control as well as post-rolling cooling by means of a highly advanced heat treatment process. Internal hardness, a critical factor in achieving longer rail life, is especially robust deep inside SP3 as well as on its surface. As a result of the specialized technologies developed by JFE Steel, the useful life of SP3 is more than 10% longer than that of conventional head-hardened rail. For railway companies, this translates into significantly reduced costs for rail maintenance and replacement.
SP3 demonstrated its superb wear resistance in tests conducted jointly in the United States by JFE and BNSF Railway, one of the country’s largest railroads. The tests, which lasted more than one year, alternately used SP3 and conventional head-hardened rail on the same sections of curved track, which carried actual freight traffic in the states of Nebraska and Idaho.
As a result of SP3’s performance in the tests, BNSF placed a commercial order for about 600 tonnes, which JFE Steel shipped from Japan in February.
Going forward, JFE Steel says it will develop markets for SP3 in North America and other railway markets around the world. The company said it also will continue to expand its lineup of premium rails to meet increasingly sophisticated needs.