Operational Research of Wear of Railway Buffers Heads Covered with Aluminum Bronze

In recent years in Europe and in Poland a discernible trend of significant increase safety in rail transport can be observed. Safety improvement is realized at many levels and in many aspects (organizational, systematic, technical etc.). Implementation of Safety and Maintenance Management Systems are an example of activities seeking to systematically increase safety in rail in Europe. Similarly, on the part of technical solutions, there are discernible activities which are aimed at improving the safety level. There offer new construction solutions, new control systems or new communication technologies which are designed to increase reliability and safety of this mode of transport. For innovations introduced in vehicles, almost only improving safety in the field of implementing enhancements in construction of running gear systems of vehicle used to be thought about. However, it is worth remembering that not only the bogie, wheel set or wheels are responsible for the proper cooperation of the vehicle with the track and its safe running. Elements that have not been yet subjected to deeper analyzes are railway buffers whose proper maintenance and cooperation is a guarantee of correct vehicle dynamics, especially when passing through rail curves. This article presents the results of operational research of railway buffers whose heads were covered with an aluminium bronze layer. This solution has helped to increase the durability of their co-operating surfaces, and has allowed the resignation of the now-proposed solution, which consists in periodically covering buffers heads with the grease which has a lot of defects.