On the coupling of the vertical, lateral and longitudinal wheel-rail interactions at high frequencies and the resulting irregular wear

Abstract

A transient FE model of wheelset-rail rolling contact has been developed with ANSYS/Ls-dyna to simulate the high speed running of a free wheelset on a slab track. Applying vertical, lateral and longitudinal vibrations at the passing frequencies of typical short pitch corrugation to the wheelset with no initial lateral shift, it is found that the vertical and lateral wheel-rail interactions are coupled to a large extent, while the longitudinal relatively independent under rolling-sliding and dependent when approaching full-sliding. The resulting irregular wear calculated with implemented wear models of Archard, Tγ and Zobory increases in amplitude with the friction exploitation level, whereas its phase keeps rather stable under rolling-sliding. As full-sliding is approached, the phase shifts greatly in the presence of the vertical or lateral vibration, but not of the longitudinal vibration. Consequently, corrugation initiation from the vertical and lateral vibrations becomes harder if both full- and rolling-sliding wheels pass over.