Development and validation of a wear model for the analysis of the wheel profile evolution in railway vehicles

Abstract

The numerical wheel wear prediction in railway applications is of great importance for different aspects, such as the safety against vehicle instability and derailment, the planning of wheelset maintenance interventions and the design of an optimal wheel profile from the wear point of view. For these reasons, this paper presents a complete model aimed at the evaluation of the wheel wear and the wheel profile evolution by means of dynamic simulations, organised in two parts which interact with each other mutually: a vehicle's dynamic model and a model for the wear estimation. The first is a 3D multibody model of a railway vehicle implemented in SIMPACK™, a commercial software for the analysis of mechanical systems, where the wheel–rail interaction is entrusted to a C/C++user routine external to SIMPACK, in which the global contact model is implemented. In this regard, the research on the contact points between the wheel and the rail is based on an innovative algorithm developed by the authors in previous works, while normal and tangential forces in the contact patches are calculated according to Hertz's theory and Kalker's global theory, respectively. Due to the numerical efficiency of the global contact model, the multibody vehicle and the contact model interact directly online during the dynamic simulations.\ud \ud The second is the wear model, written in the MATLAB® environment, mainly based on an experimental relationship between the frictional power developed at the wheel–rail interface and the amount of material removed by wear. Starting from a few outputs of the multibody simulations (position of contact points, contact forces and rigid creepages), it evaluates the local variables, such as the contact pressures and local creepages, using a local contact model (Kalker's FASTSIM algorithm). These data are then passed to another subsystem which evaluates, by means of the considered experimental relationship, both the material to be removed and its distribution along the wheel profile, obtaining the correspondent worn wheel geometry.\ud \ud The wheel wear evolution is reproduced by dividing the overall chosen mileage to be simulated in discrete spatial steps: at each step, the dynamic simulations are performed by means of the 3D multibody model keeping the wheel profile constant, while the wheel geometry is updated through the wear model only at the end of the discrete step. Thus, the two parts of the whole model work alternately until the completion of the whole established mileage. Clearly, the choice of an appropriate step length is one of the most important aspects of the procedure and it directly affects the result accuracy and the required computational time to complete the analysis.\ud \ud The whole model has been validated using experimental data relative to tests performed with the ALn 501 ‘Minuetto’ vehicle in service on the Aosta–Pre Saint Didier track; this work has been carried out thanks to a collaboration with Trenitalia S.p.A and Rete Ferroviaria Italiana, which have provided the necessary techn...

An innovative degraded adhesion model for railway vehicles: development and experimental validation

“…More particularly, new theoretical and experimental relations among the adhesion coefficient f , the specific dissipated energy W sp and the limit adhesion levels f d , f r (degraded adhesion and adhesion recovery) will be introduced and analysed. This way the physical origin and meaning of the transition function λ(W sp ) will be better investigated, trying to connect it to more elementary physical and tribological phenomena (for example phenomena related to wear of the wheel and rail profiles on which the authors have recently worked; see for instance the references [9,25,53,54]). …”

Development of a model for the simultaneous analysis of wheel and rail wear in railway systems

“…The statistical approach is the same used for the model validation (only related to wheel wear) performed on the Aosta-Pre Saint Didier line [6,7] and it is obviously necessary because of the length and the complexity of the considered network that would make both its multibody modeling and the computational load impractical. The outputs of the vehicle model represent also the inputs of the wear model and are the global contact variables evaluated during all the N c dynamic simulations.…”

“…The wear model has been experimentally validated in previous works on a benchmark critical scenario (Aln 501 Minuetto traveling on the Aosta-Pre Saint Didier Italian line) [6,7]. The complete Italian railway network data collection is still in progress but not yet completed because of the task complexity; other tests are scheduled on different particular tracks in order to further investigate advanced wear on the wheel (especially on the wheel tread) and on the rail.…”

“…In this work the authors will present an innovative model to estimate the evolution of the wheel and rail profile due to wear based on the combination of multibody and wear modeling; subsequently an exhaustive comparison with the wear evaluation model implemented in the Simpack commercial multibody software will be performed, both in terms of accuracy and efficiency, to further validate the wear model (in addition to the wheel wear experimental tests carried out in previous works [6,7]). …”

“…Moreover one of main critical aspects in the wear evaluation is the availability of experimental data for the validation of the model, because the wear is a long-term phenomenon which requires several months of monitoring to collect the data; usually the experimental campaigns are carried out only in dry contact condition [6,7]. If on line experimental measurement cannot be carried out, the problem can be overcome carrying out experimental proofs on a scaled test rig [8], in some case also related to wet contact condition [9].…”