Damage Tolerance Concepts for Railway Switch Components

Therefore, a concept for the assignment of new materials regarding the manufacturing process is presented in this work. For the necessary bending process, a static equivalent to the Kitagawa-Takahashi diagram for the maximum admissible strain in the outer fiber depending on the flaw size is introduced. For cyclic loading, the endurance limit is used for dimensioning. Here, a commonly used stress based design concept using the Smith diagram and a fracture mechanics approach using the Kitagawa-Takahashi diagram are adapted for such components.