Title of the Experiment: Steel Processing
Professor: Christina Peters
Date of the Experiment: 10/31/13 and 11/7/13
Due Date: 11/21/2013
Outline
•Abstract
•Introduction
•Background
•Procedure
•Results and Data
•Discussion
•Conclusion
Abstract
This report presents the processing of steel to understand the main reason of bent rail that
leads to the accident. In addition, the testing consists of two parts steel processing 1 and
steel processing two. In the first part, it is very important to understand five phases in steel
including austenite, ferrite, pearlite, cementite, and martensite after processing six
specimens. Moreover, to analyze the properties and hardness of reference sample, heat
treatment, hardening, and tempering are the important processing to collect the best results
for the comparison of reference samples. Secondly, steel processing 2 is the next part to
analyze the bent rail to see the cause of failure that leads to the accident. In fact, the work
is to do metallographic examination to identify the certain phases in the sample. The works
for steel processing 2 include cutting the specimen, mounting the specimen, grinding,
polishing, etching and examining microstructure. After doing these works, it is easily
realize the pictures and microstructures of sample verify the quality of steel in bent rail.
Finally, collecting the information and results of both labs will help to analyze the real
reason of bent rail causing to the accident. Reference samples are made to be able to
compare with bent rail sample.
Introduction
This report discusses the purpose of steel processing, and it also helps to analyze and find
the cause of the accident due to the change of bent rail after comparing the changes of
reference samples and analyzing the sample of bent rail. Before doing the experiment, it is
necessary to know the reason why this experiment takes place. In fact, a big accident
happened in Florida in Spring when the riders got the bad accident on the track. As a
result, the accident led to the death of four people and injury of four people. Because of
this problem, the investigators tried to figure out the main reason of this accident. And,
they found that the outside track wheel was inclined more than 30 degrees than its normal
due to the support bracket rail. Moreover, many investigations were studied at the other
locations to see the change of the result. Because of the above information, this report
discusses one more time the changes of phases of steel and analyzes the equipment failure.
