Abstract
In the Japan railway company group, rails are welded at over 50,000 points every year, of which those welded by the gas pressure welding (GPW) method account for approximately 30 %. Because gas pressure welds have as good performance as flash welds, and the GPW equipment is highly mobile due to its compactness when compared with that of flash welding. However, GPW requires special skill for grinding end surfaces and controlling oxyacetylene flame and pressure. In the future, a number of skilled operators to perform GPW will decrease, and the improvement of the operational efficiency will be strongly demanded. Therefore, investigations have been performed to simplify end surface grinding. Consequently, new gas burners and the new applied pressure method used for GPW were developed in order to improve its reliability.
