In this study, a numerical procedure is developed to predict the wear of turnout rails, and the effect of track parameters is investigated. The procedure includes simulation of the dynamic interaction between the train and the turnout, the rolling contact analysis, and the wear model. The dynamic interaction is simulated with the validated commercial software Simpack that uses a space-dependent model of a railway turnout. To reproduce the actual operating conditions of a railway turnout, stochastic variations in the input parameters are considered in the simulation of the dynamic interaction. The rolling contact is analyzed with the semi-Hertzian method and improved FASTSIM algorithm, which enable the contact model to deal with situations of multipoint contact and nonelliptic contact. Based on the Archard's wear law, the wear model requires the calculation of normal/tangential stresses and a relative slide on the contact patches. The numerical procedure is performed for the selected sections of the vehicle, which runs through the railway turnout in the diverging route. By using the numerical procedure, the effect of track parameters (track gage, rail inclination, and friction coefficient) on the wear of turnout rails is analyzed. The results show that the wear of the front wheelset is more serious than the wear of the rear wheelset for a single vehicle. The degree of wear of switch rails is more severe than that of the stock rails and the difference is more obvious for the front wheelset of the switch rails. The wear of switch rails is mainly concentrated on the rail gage corner, while the wear of stock rails is mainly concentrated on the rail crown. For the analysed CN60-1100-1:18 turnout and the high-speed vehicle CRH2 in China, the rail wear rate could be slowed down by increasing the track gage and decreasing the rail inclination. Alternatively, the rail wear rate could be slowed by decreasing the friction coefficient; however, the variation of wear depth is quite small for friction coefficients that are larger than 0.3.
Rail welds are widely used in high-speed railways and short-wave irregularities usually appear due to limitations in welding technology. These irregularities can excite a high wheel/rail force and are regarded as the main cause of deterioration in track structures. To measure this fierce force (or deterioration of the rail weld), axle box acceleration is treated as an effective and economic measure, though an exact quantitative relation between these two quantities remains elusive. This paper aims to develop such a relation in order to provide a new theoretical basis and an analysis method for monitoring and controlling weld geometry irregularity. To better understand the characteristics of axle box acceleration, the paper consists of two parts: an observation and a numerical simulation of axle box acceleration by rail welds. Based on measured data from field tests, axle box acceleration at rail welds was found to have high-frequency vibrations in two frequency bands (i.e., 350-500 Hz and 1000-1200 Hz). Upon analyzing the vibration characteristics in time-frequency domains, the exact location of the rail weld irregularity could be identified. Subsequently, a 3D high-speed wheel/rail rolling contact finite element model was employed to investigate the effect of rail weld geometry on axle box acceleration, and led to the discovery that the weld length and depth determine the vibration frequency and amplitude of the axle box acceleration, respectively. A quantitative relation between axle box acceleration and wheel/rail force has also been determined. Finally, we propose an approach for real-time health detection of rail welds and discuss the influence of other defects and rail welds on the acceleration signal of the axle box.
During both running and wheel cut operations, railway vehicle wheels and the friction rollers which support and drive the wheelset on a typical wheel cut lathe are subject to wear and hence are likely to develop out-of-round characteristics after sustained use. The resulting out-of-round wheels can significantly affect the ride quality of services and can potentially increase the incidence of fatigue related component failures due to resultant higher intensity loading cycles. Furthermore, the corresponding out-of-round of the lathe's friction rollers will continue to degrade subsequent cut quality of wheels. To allow analysis of the out-of-round characteristics generated using an underfloor wheel lathe operated by China high Speed train, a mathematical model based on typical EMU vehicle's wheelsets and their interactions with the wheel lathe friction rollers was established. The influencing factors on cut process, including number of cuts, eccentricity forms of the friction rollers, and the longitudinal spacing of the two rollers have on the cut quality of the wheels has been analysed. The results show that two cut can effectively remove the high order polygon on the wheel surface. The eccentricity and phase angle of the friction rollers has no influence on the cut quality of high order polygons, whereas conversely, it http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/JRRT
This paper aims at assessing several fast non-Hertzian methods, coupled with two wear models, based on the wheel–rail rolling contact and wear prediction. Four contact models, namely Kik-Piotrowski's method, Linder's method, Ayasse-Chollet's STRIPES algorithm and Sichani's ANALYN algorithm are employed for comparing the normal contact. For their tangential modelling, two tangential algorithms, i.e. FASTSIM and FaStrip, are used. Two commonly used wear models, namely the Archard (extended at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology) and USFD (developed by the University of Sheffield based on T-gamma approach), are further utilized for wear distribution computation. All results predicted by the fast non-Hertzian methods are evaluated against the results of Kalker's CONTACT code using penetration as the input. Since the two wear models adopt different expressions for calculating the wear performance, the attention of this paper is on assessing which one is more suitable for the fast non-Hertzian methods to utilize. The comparison shows that the combination of the USFD wear model with any of the fast non-Hertzian methods agrees better with CONTACT+USFD. In general, ANALYN+FaStrip is the best solution for the simulation of the wheel–rail rolling contact, while STRIPES+FASTSIM can provide better accuracy for the maximum wear depth prediction using the USFD wear model.
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