A DEEPER LOOK
Photo Credit: David C. Lester
TACKLING FATIGUE DEFECTS
IN STEEL S teel is one of the most important materials ever developed. Its many and varied alloys are widely used as a primary structural material where strength, ductility, toughness, and hardness must be provided at specified levels of reliability. Steel can be produced cost-effectively even in very large volumes—enough to build some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers, longest bridges, and largest railway networks. Steel is among the materials
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considered infinitely recyclable—recyclable over and over again without any loss of quality. In fact, steels used today in railway rails, railway wheels, and railway bridges are largely produced from recycled scrap that is remelted in electric-arc furnaces. Increasingly, these furnaces and all subsequent steel processing stages are powered using renewable energy sources. Steel as a constructional material was introduced in the mid 1850s when the
Bessemer process was being perfected to produce reliably acceptable steel in large volumes. The first steel railway rails were installed in England in the late 1850s. The first steel bridge, the Eads Bridge, crossing the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Missouri, was dedicated on the Fourth of July 1874 and is still in use today. The first steel skyscraper, the Rand McNally Building in Chicago, Illinois, was completed in 1889. Over the 170 years that steel alloys February 2024 // Railway Track & Structures 9