MMK METIZ (a member of MMK Group) is now producing more steel bars with the help of innovational nano-technologies.

According to MMK Group’s PR Department, such bars are used to make a new generation of railway sleepers. The conventional railway sleepers come with a set of forty-four wire strings with the diameter of 3mm each, all made of high-carbon steel. Now that the railway transport is speedier and has more loads to deal with, a new technology is implemented that uses only four pivots with the diameter of 9.6mm to 10mm; these pivots are stronger and sturdier than the older structure. However, their strength depends on using heavy-alloy kinds of steel with some content of expensive vanadium. Thanks to the joint work of MMK METIZ experts and scientists from G.I. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University, the mechanical-thermal treatment of material resulted in obtaining the same degree of strength in the usual high-carbon wire without adding any alloying components.

This project by MMK METIZ and G.I. Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University on the hi-tech production of steel bars for new generation railway sleepers using an innovational thermal deformation nano-structuring won in an All-Russian contest and was given a government subsidy of 178m RUR. Following a number of trials and tests, an official approval was provided by Moscow-based All-Russian Railway Research Institute (VNIIZhT).

According to MMK METIZ Director Vladimir Lebedev, the production output of the new steel bars is gradually rising. The company already gets guaranteed orders for 900,000 tons of bars every month.

‘We are only producing trial batches for now, but we expect to obtain a new technology this year that will allow us to start making these bars on an industrial scale,’ head of MMK METIZ reports.