To Perform Investigation into Failure of Tamping Arm - Literature Review

The Tamping arm is joined to main body using a sleeve and a pin and the joint is pivot point. The upward end of arm is connected with hydraulic cylinder and lower one is connected with tamping tool. During the working of Tamping machine, the Tamping Unit because of its self-weight penetrates through the bed of ballast up to desired depth, after which the hydraulic cylinder cranks outwards causing the tamping arm to move inwards. This inward movement of arm squeezes the ballast and fill the gap below the sleeper. Due to reactions from the self-weight and Hydraulic force, the pivot point that connects the tamping arm with main body fails frequently. The main cause of this failure is the high friction between sleeve and pin due to surface to surface contact. This high friction causes erosion of material and induces play in the fit between the tamping arm and sleeve. There is requirement to replace tamping arm at a small span due to which cost is high due to frequent downtime on railway line. Further literature review is to be done to verify this cause.to avoid the failure of Tamping Unit the Failure Analysis is being carried out. For this CAD modeling of the tamping unit is carried out in CAD software PRO-E.