• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.13-18
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• 2016

KTX wheelset bearings have thus far been maintained in accordance with the maintenance system of French national railway company, SNCF. The overhaul cycle time (OCT) of KTX wheelset bearings is now 1.4 million km in mileage. This value, however, has not been validated in Korea that has much different railway environments with France. In fact, it is impossible to validate OCT of wheelset bearings directly because they are disassembled and cleaned only when some faults are detected. In this paper, the accuracy of the current OCT value was evaluated indirectly by investigating the effect of grease lubricants on the bearing life. Five grease samples (one new and four aged greases) were used in this study. Four aged greases of different conditions were obtained from four wheelset bearings whose mileages were about 0.3, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.8 million km, respectively. Each grease sample was then injected into the RCF (Rolling Contact Fatigue) tester and fatigue lifetime was experimentally estimated. In addition, the wt% of Fe in each grease sample was analysed. The experiment results reveal that the bearing lifetime is inversely proportional to the mileage of grease sample while the wt% of Fe increases with the mileage of grease sample. Based on the experimental results, it can be concluded that the current OCT value is appropriate for the first overhaul of wheelset bearings. However, further validation is required to determine the second and third OCT values.