The paper presents the impact of exceeding the railway rails lifespan which usually causes a railway structural failure, thus an accident. The research highlights the rails’s high degradation, especially on the running area, consisting in 60-70% weight loss by advanced wear of the rail, followed by fatigue fracture caused by alternating cyclic stresses that initiates the crack and also by tensile stresses resulting in the crack growth. The chemical composition, structural and mechanical properties were analyzed in order to establish the causes that led to the railway rails rupture.

Automotive industry is constantly interested in building cars made of light and high strength parts in order to reduce the emission levels, the fuel consumption and minimize the effects of a car crash. Some parts may be made of lighter materials, but the steel ones must compensate the strength needed for the car body. Research is made for finding new materials showing high strength combined with high ductility. Among them, transformation – induced – plasticity steels are of great interest, efforts being made to improve their characteristics. A new composition of such a steel is presented, its features being compared with those of three other steels of the same class and category. Optical microscopy at different magnifications is performed, together with Vickers hardness test. Structural particularities are found for each tested steel, justified by their own chemical compositions. The new steel reveals important characteristics: besides the mainly bainitic structure, it has both larger ferritic areas and amounts of retained austenite, making him proper for further study.