Hardening of Rail Vehicle Axles

The development of the technology for laser hardening of the axle seats of rail vehicles aims to improve the high-cycle service life of these axles under wheel pressing and thus to increase safety in rail transport. Laser hardening can create high compressive stresses that increase the fatigue resistance of the material. The paper will present the results of this development on the EA1N material together with the documentation of the microstructure, hardness profiles and correlations with the internal residual stresses as well. These compressive stresses can play a crucial role in significantly increasing the fatigue resistance of the axles under operation.