The invention discloses a heat treatment method for reducing the steel rail
fatigue crack propagation rate. The heat treatment method comprises the following steps: a hot-rolled steel rail head is subjected to segmented accelerated cooling heat treatment: specifically, the initial
cooling temperature is controlled to be 720-860 DEG C, the first-stage rail
head cooling speed is 5-8 DEG C / s, and thecooling time is 20-35 s; subsequent second-stage cooling: in this stage, circulating periodic cooling is adopted, firstly, the rail head is cooled in an accelerated manner, wherein the cooling speedis 3-6 DEG C / s, the
cooling time is 6-10 s, then accelerated cooling is stopped, the steel rail is naturally placed for 2-5 s, a cooling period is formed, through continuous circulation of said cooling period, when the temperature of the rail head is reduced to 300-450 DEG C, accelerated cooling is stopped, then the rail head is subjected to heat preservation for 10-20 min, and finally the rail head is naturally cooled to the
room temperature. In the steel rail obtained through the method, the room-temperature metallographic structure of the whole section is composed of lamellar
pearlite and asmall amount of ferrite; the
fatigue crack propagation rate can be controlled to be 5-8 m / Gc (
delta K = 10 MPa.m < 0.5 >) and 14-18 m / Gc (
delta K = 13.5 MPa.m < 0.5 >); the method can be applied to various lines of passenger transportation, passenger and cargo mixed transportation and the like, the service life of the steel rail is prolonged, and the
driving safety of the steel rail is improved.