Wheel/Rail Contact Irregularity of High-Speed Railway Frog

Abstract

Wheel/rail contact irregularity of frog zone is one of the main causes that restrict a train to pass turnout at a high speed. According to the structural characteristics of nose rail and wing rail of frog, a calculation model of wheel/rail contact was established by adopting minimum distance search method so as to reveal the wheel/rail contact irregularity of frog with variant wheel treads and tip-hiding structures. Take the 350 km/h passenger dedicated line No. 42 turnout as an example, contrastive analysis of wheel/rail contact irregularity was carried out under the following conditions: vertical tip-hiding structure, horizontal tip-hiding structure and wheelset lateral movement. The Result shows that: (1) the maximum wheel/tail contact irregularity value appears when the wheel/rail contact point move from the wing rail to nose rail; (2) with the wheels wear increasing, the frog irregularity increases transversely and decrease vertically; (3) as for the same tip-hiding structure, transverse irregularity dominates; (4) it is suggested that adopting horizontal tip-hiding structure with the lowering value at nose rail top width 10.0, 15.0, 35.0 mm by 10.0, 3.0, 0.0 mm respectively.