Abstract
For a fast calculation of vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics, wheel-rail contact geometric gap is usually idealised in elliptic or nonelliptic form. These two idealisations deviate from the actual one if the lateral combined curvature within the contact patch is not constant or the yaw angle of wheelset exists. The influence of these idealisations on contact solution has not yet been deeply understood, and thus the accuracy of simplified contact modelling applied to vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics remains uncertain. This paper presents a numerical methodology to treat 3D wheel-rail rolling contact, in which the asymmetric geometric gap due to yaw angle is fully taken into account. The attention of this work is placed on investigating the effect of geometric gap idealisation on wheel-rail contact force, rolling contact solution, and wear distribution. It can help with the effective wheel-rail contact modelling on the computation of both vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics.
Highlights
As an economic and environmental protection transportation tool, railway keeps attracting attention from governments and industries
This is verified from the comparison of wear performance that consider the combined effect of yaw angle on contact shape and lateral creepage
This paper presents a 3D geometrical gap searching method, which constructs a bridge between contact point detection method and 3D non-Hertz rolling contact theory
Summary
As an economic and environmental protection transportation tool, railway keeps attracting attention from governments and industries. The main parts of railway are vehicle and track, which are coupled by the frictional rolling contact of wheel-rail system. That means the load of dozens of tons is bore by contact patch in the level of mm, resulting in a very high contact stress. For this reason, wheel-rail materials are subjected to rolling contact fatigue or severe wear despite improper wheel-rail profile design or being not timely maintained. The set-up of profile design or maintenance strategy mainly depends on accurate wheel-rail contact modelling and vehicle-track dynamics simulation. The accurate contact model should be simplified appropriately to be integrated with vehicle-track dynamics to meet its low computational cost demand
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