EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND MONITORING OF TEMPERATURE AND SURFACE ROUGHNESS AND MICRO-HARDNESS OF THE WHEEL–RAIL CONTACT IN THE DESERT REGION OF THE OUARGLA TRAMWAY

Public transport via trams has become increasingly important in daily life to meet the growing demand for economic and environmental considerations. In order to ensure the safety of the railway system and reduce service costs, it is necessary to understand the tribological behavior of the system. There are various types of damage such as fatigue, wear, and cracking that can harm the wheels and rails. To determine the wear mechanisms and identify the situations in which wear movements occur, it is crucial to monitor factors such as temperature, surface roughness, and contact micro-hardness between the wheel and the rail. The objective of this study is to analyze the tribological behavior and the impact of climatic conditions on the wheel–rail contact system in the desert area of the Ouargla tramway in Algeria. To achieve this, an intelligent sensor programmed by a microcontroller was utilized to measure the temperature of the wheel–rail contact. Additionally, a hardness tester was used to measure the micro-hardness of the rail, and a roughness tester was utilized to monitor the surface condition of the rail. The measured temperature values during the passage of the tramway varied between ambient temperature and a temperature of 450^∘C. The micro-hardness values ranged from 270 Hv to 440 Hv, and the roughness values varied between 0.4$$$\mu$m and 2.7$$$\mu$m.