The Influence of the Suspension on the Phenomena of Wheel-Rail Contact

Abstract

Efficient use of adhesion between wheels and rails involves a good knowledge of this phenomenon, in order to equip the vehicle with adequate facilities and systems that protect the vehicle and the rail. The loading of the vehicle's axle with dynamic loads in vertical and horizontal planes, are to be developed in the area of contact, both normal stress and shear distributed stress, their sum giving the friction force and the moment of pivoting friction (spin). This makes the wheel-rail contact problems take the two aspects of the study, namely the problem of normal and tangential contact issue. The normal contact problem involves regular geometric shape bodies, determining the size of the resulting contact surface, the distribution of the normal contact pressures and the relationship between the proximity of the bodies and the normal contact force. Solving the problem of the tangential wheel-rail contact is about to establish the correlation between the creepage, normal contact forces and friction forces, and also the ratio between the adherent contact surface and the nominal contact surface where the creepage ocurs.