APPLICATIONS
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Lucchini RS is a global rail wheelset and axle leader with a mission to boost evidence-based safety, sustainability, and resilience of the rail industry. The group’s goal is to assist its clients with services, solutions, and processes that allow boosting safety factors across the entire product lifecycle.
Since the beginning, Lucchini RS approach to safety has been to work for the maximum result, pioneering solutions years before they were requested by the market. Doing so allows the Group to innovate from “furnance to fleet” significantly raising the overall safety coefficient of the entire rail ecosystem, not just specific products.
With its research centres, more than 30 years of manufacturing know-how and in-house maintenance facilities, Lucchini RS has a realistic view of many problems that OEMs and rail operators face when it comes to wheelsets, wheelsets and axles, in terms of durability and safety. The company has the opportunity to consciously test, apply and design innovative safety solutions designed to facilitate maintenance and predictive maintenance.
Lucchini RS stands out for the development and the engineering of a full range of solutions to ensure the appropriate protection of wheelsets far all service conditions.
Innovative ultrasonic inspection probe for solid axles. The inspection is made from the blind hole designed at the end of the axle, allowing automatic and more reliable inspection of the entire axle in shorter time without the need to disassemble the wheelset from the train.
Starcrack was developed in collaboration with the Polytechnic of Milan, to track load spectrum or wheelset loads and estimate the optimal in-service NDT inspection intervals. A derivation of the famous Nasgro algorithm, created by NASA to guarantee maximum safety of the aerospace materials, Starcrack’s effectiveness and precision are validated by decades of tests. It can be used together with the Smartset® technology and separately to calculate crack propagation stress and corrosion fatigue.
Cold rolling process for axles and sub surface area has shown to increase the fatigue limit by up to 20%, almost completely limit crack propagation and slow down the appearance of the corrosion. Cold rolling also allows to avoid non-destructive checks on subsequent wheel change.
The application of spray coating of molybdenum on axle seats hardens the surface, making it resistant to scratches and damages during the wheels’ fitting and unfitting. It also increases a fatigue limit of the axle seats, boosting safety.