Design of the tooling of a complex geometric shape for electrothermal processing of the polymer covering plate of the bogie friction wedge

Abstract

The article analyzes the operation of the bogie friction wedge. It considers the question of the necessity and possibility of enhancing the reliability and operational resource of wedge-type shock absorbers of railway bogies by increasing the operational properties of a polymer covering plate of a bogie friction wedge. A method for increasing the operational properties of the polymer covering plate, consisting in its processing by high-frequency currents, is proposed. To implement the high-frequency processing of the considered polymeric covering plate and achieve its uniform warming-up throughout the volume, a specialized tooling is developed and constructed according to the technique established earlier. The developed tooling made it possible to implement a uniform non-inertial self-regulating high-frequency heating throughout the entire volume of the polymer covering plate in laboratory conditions with high intensity. As a result of full-scale tests of the developed tooling and the proposed method of high-frequency processing, deviations of temperature values in different parts of the heated polymer plate became apparent. All of this shows that the heating is not completely uniform. The greatest deviation value was 7.9%. As a result of the work, it was possible to establish the reasons for the lack of full uniformity and to determine the direction of further research.