Simulation of the impact of preheating temperature on railway aluminothermic welding

Abstract

For more than a century, railway rails have been joined using the aluminothermic welding process. The flexibility, compactness of the weld, and ease of execution are all advantages of this process. It is not necessary to use external energy to finish the operation. It is provided by the exothermic effect of the chemical reactions of the elements of the aluminothermic combination. The design of the mold with the pouring system, which should ensure even pouring of thermal steel, without turbulence, then even heat dissipation or cooling in order to obtain an appropriate micro and macro structure of steel, free of internal and external defects, is an important factor in producing a welded joint of the required quality. As a result, the design of the mold was continually developing, necessitating the adoption of expensive experimental approaches in industrial settings. To eliminate costly and time-consuming industrial experiments, software applications are being employed to imitate aditional casting methods that can be used in the casting of thermite steel during the fabrication of welded railway connections. This study presents a simulation of casting thermite steel in the mold cavity, i.e., in the weld joint, for the 49E1 rail using the NovaFlow & Solid CV software package.