A case study of wear-type rail corrugation prediction and control using speed variation

Abstract

The transportation noise phenomenon known as wear-type rail corrugation is a significant problem in railway engineering, that manifests as an undesirable periodic wear pattern on the contact surface of rails. Rail corrugations induce unwanted vibrations, noise and damage to vehicle and track systems. Currently the only reliable solution to corrugation is removal by grinding at significant expense to the railway operator. Recent research by the current authors has theoretically shown that uniformity in train pass speeds over a site enhances corrugation growth rate and that broadening the probabilistic pass speed distribution may be a possible method of mitigating corrugation growth. To further test these results and to quantify the expected performance, in this paper, field measured data from a site with recurrent corrugation is used to tune and validate both efficient analytical and more complex numerical corrugation growth models. In doing so, previously developed analytical predictions for growth rate under varying speed conditions are generalised to both tangent track and cornering conditions. Validation and comparison with more complex benchmarked numerical models and field measurements is therefore achieved. The effect of changing the field measured pass speed distribution is then investigated and results quantifying the expected reduction in corrugation growth rate are presented, compared and discussed. Possible undesirable side-effects of implementing such a corrugation control strategy are also investigated.