Abstract

Railway track maintenance services aim to shorten the time of removing failures on the railways. One of the most important element that shorten the repair time is the quick access to the failure site with an appropriate equipment. The use of road-rail vehicles is becoming increasingly important in this field. In this type of constructions, it is possible to use proven road vehicles such as self-propelled machines or trucks running on wheels with tires. Equipping these vehicles with a parallel rail drive system allows for quick access to the failure site using both roads and railways. Steel rail wheels of road-rail vehicles are designed for specific applications. Since the total weight of vehicle is a crucial parameter for roadworthiness, the effort is made to minimize the mass of rail wheels. The wheel under consideration is mounted directly on the hydraulic motor. This method of assembly is structurally convenient, as no shafts or intermediate couplings are required. On the other hand, it results in strict requirements for the wheel geometry and can cause significant stress concentration. Therefore, the problem of wheel geometry optimization is discussed. Consideration is given to the use of ER8 steel for railway application and 42CrMo4 high-strength steel. Finite element analysis within Ansys software and various optimization tools and methods, such as random tool, subproblem approximation method and first-order method are applied. The obtained results allow to minimize the rail wheel mass with respect to the used material. Moreover, computational demands and methods leading to the best results are compared.

Highlights

  • Road-rail vehicles are designed to operate on both roads and tracks

  • The vehicle’s tires run on rails and the rail wheels only guide the vehicle on the track

  • The drivetrain unit can be equipped with a friction drive system or hydraulic motors [1,2]

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Summary

Introduction

Running on rails is carried out by means of a rail drive system. Such a system can be used for driving the vehicle on the track or as a power unit. The vehicle’s tires run on rails and the rail wheels only guide the vehicle on the track. The use of large diameter rail wheels in these vehicles would significantly increase the curb weight of the truck. It is possible to equip these vehicles with smaller diameter rail wheels, which do not significantly increase the curb weight of the truck. Rail wheels for road-rail vehicles are designed for a specific application depending on the required strength and function. Problems related to the optimization of the rail wheels for rolling stock were considered by authors of several publications. (Nielsen and Fredö, 2006) [3] presented a numerical procedure of multi-disciplinary

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