Effects of rail flash-butt welding and post-weld heat treatment processes meeting different national standards on residual stresses of welded joints

This study investigates residual stresses of the welded joint heat-affected zone for the processes that meet the Chinese and European standards of field rail welding. Furthermore, this study investigates the factory rail welding process and different normalizing methods in China. According to the residual stresses data and the Debye ring test result, the residual stresses distribution of the welded joint meets the Chinese standard and uses induction normalizing treatment resulting in the best service performance and an improvement in grain size uniformity. In the absence of a normalizing process, the ideal welding process that meets the Chinese standard is actually inferior to that which meets the European standard, with regard to a uniform distribution of the residual stresses of the welded joint.