Abstract
Severe wear is a common damage mechanism in railway turnouts, which strongly affects the dynamic performance of railway vehicles and maintenance costs of tracks. This article explores the effects of profile wear on contact behaviors in the wheel–rail/switch contact and dynamic interaction, and nominal and measured worn turnout rail profiles are used as boundary conditions of wheel–rail contact. The calculation of the dynamic loads and the resultant contact stresses and internal stresses makes it possible to rationally design railway turnouts and correctly select the material to be applied for their components. For these reasons, the multi-body system SIMPACK and finite element software ANSYS are used to calculate the features of load and subsequently distributions of contact stresses and internal stresses in the regions of wheel–turnout components. The results show that profile wear disturbs the distribution of wheel–rail contact point pairs, changes the positions of wheel–rail contact points along the longitudinal direction, and affects the dynamic interaction of vehicle and turnout. For the measured profile in this article, profile wear aggravates vertical dynamic responses significantly but improves lateral dynamic responses. Profile wear disturbs the normal contact situations between the wheel and switch rail and worsens the stress state of the switch rail.
Highlights
Turnouts (switches and crossings) are essential components of railway infrastructure, which provide flexibility to traffic operation
Turnouts are essential components of railway infrastructure, which provide flexibility to traffic operation. They are consisted of a switch panel, a crossing panel, and a closure panel, see Figure 1.1 In the switch panel, multiple wheel–rail contacts are common and there is a disturbance to nominal wheel–rail contact conditions due to wheels’ transfer from stock rail to switch rail.[2]
In the case of a degraded turnout, such wear causes a great change in rail profile and, strongly affects the running behavior of railway vehicles, such as motion stability, riding comfort, and derailment safety.[3,4]
Summary
Turnouts (switches and crossings) are essential components of railway infrastructure, which provide flexibility to traffic operation. Keywords Turnout, profile wear, wheel–rail contact, dynamic interaction, finite element method, contact stresses
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