Contact stress and residual stress in the nose rail of a high manganese steel crossing due to wheel contact loading

Abstract

ABSTRACTFatigue failure of a high manganese steel crossing is related to its internal crack initiation and growth, which is affected significantly by the magnitude and distribution pattern of contact stress and residual stress in the crossing. Considering the actual service conditions of a crossing and the accuracy requirement for numerical calculation, a whole model of wheel/crossing/ties and a partial model of wheel/crossing are established using elastic‐plastic finite element method. The distributions of contact stress fields and residual stress fields due to wheel contact loading are studied. The effect of train speed on the residual stress in the nose rail is discussed. The contact stress field shows regular contours in the cross‐section of nose rail and decreases remarkably with increasing distance of the wheel‐crossing contact position. The maximum contact stress is located at the contact surface between wheel and crossing. The maximum residual stress is located at a position of 1.5‐2.0 mm below the surface of the nose rail, rather than at the contact surface of wheel and crossing. In a failed high manganese steel crossing, the dense cracks mainly were observed neither at the position of maximum contact stress (the contact surface between the wheel and the crossing), nor at the position of maximum residual stress (1.5‐2.0 mm below the surface of the nose rail), but around the depth of 0.8‐1.0 mm from the worn surface, which is between the position of maximum contact stress and the position of maximum residual stress. It indicates that the combined effects of the maximum contact stress and the maximum residual stress play important roles in fatigue crack initiation in the nose rail. The size of high residual stress region increases with the increase of the train speed. The maximum residual stress in the nose rail increases remarkably with the increase of the train speed.