Abstract
This study focuses on the quantification of the influence of rolling stock failures (RSFs) on railway infrastructure. Taking the wheel flat, a common RSF, as an example, we introduce four quantification indexes to evaluate the influence on the following four deterioration mechanisms: track settlement (TS), track component fatigue (TCF), abrasive wear (AW), and rolling contact fatigue (RCF). Our results indicate that TS, TCF, and AW increase sharply with the increase of the wheel flat length and the vehicle speed, and this increasing trend becomes more acute with the increase of the wheel flat length and the vehicle speed. At low speeds, RCF increases gradually as the wheel flat length increases; at high speeds, it increases sharply at first and then decreases gradually. The influence of the wheel flat on TCF and AW is the most obvious, followed by TS and RCF. These findings can help infrastructure managers (IMs) to better understand infrastructure conditions related to RSFs and can aid them in managing problems with vehicle abnormality in track access charging.
Highlights
Deterioration of rail tracks is an inevitable phenomenon of the railway infrastructure affected by traffic and climate and is one of the main concerns for train operators and throughout infrastructure sectors (Smith et al, 2017)
Track deterioration mechanisms are mainly classified into four categories: track settlement (TS), track component fatigue (TCF), abrasive wear (AW), and rolling contact fatigue (RCF), and each category has a corresponding quantitative index depending on vehicle characteristics and generated wheel-rail (WR) forces (Öberg and Andersson, 2009)
When the vehicle speed is increased to 90 km/h and the wheel flat length is increased to 40 mm, the TCF and AW caused by the vehicle are higher than 250 and 400 times, respectively, relative to that caused by the train with a speed of 30 km/h and a wheel flat length of 0 mm
Summary
Deterioration of rail tracks is an inevitable phenomenon of the railway infrastructure affected by traffic and climate and is one of the main concerns for train operators and throughout infrastructure sectors (Smith et al, 2017). The data provided by the three companies indicated that there were approximately 95 500 damaged vehicles with a total of approximately 244 500 RSFs in a year, including CBFs and RGFs. we conducted a separate analysis on the RGFs (Fig. 1b), and the results showed that the four leading failures were wheel flat, axlebox failure, material deposition, and thermal overload, with wheel flat failure accounting for the highest proportion (19%) followed by axlebox failure (18%). Due to limited data and a limited range of vehicle types, these statistics may not reflect the status of the entire railway industry They do show that the wheel flat is one of the most critical RSFs: the large impact force induced by structural discontinuity on the wheel flat area will accelerate the deterioration of infrastructure elements such as rails, sleepers, fasteners, and other components (Appel and Hecht, 2017; Mitusch and Hecht, 2017; Bosso et al, 2018). Quantifying the influence of wheel flats on track deterioration allows better safety management and investment decisions, benefiting the competitive success of railways
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