An application exploration of flexible skew rolling a rail car axle

This paper presents a new method in axles manufacturing called flexible skew rolling (FSR) process and its application exploration was conducted in laboratory by producing a rail car axle. The FSR rolling path for rail car axle was designed and calculated and then programmed into the FSR mill. The material of the rolled shafts was LZ50 steel and its diameter is 60 mm. By conducting experiments, a rail car axle with multistep was rolled successfully. There is no central crack in the rolled piece, and the outer grain is refined into 22.23μm from 76.45μm and the inner grain is refined into 38.94 μm from 83.47 μm. This study results verified that the FSR process is positive and the rail car axle can be rolled by FSR process.