Effects of sliding on rolling contact fatigue of railway wheels

Abstract

International audienceThis paper proposes a numerical approach based on a steady-state algorithm to predict the rolling contact fatigue crack initiation in railway wheels in practical conditions. This work suggests taking into account the cyclic hardening of the wheel's material and one of its originality is to conduct a complete numerical approach whatever the loading level. The main stages are the characterization and modelling of the material behaviour, the determination of the stress-strain fields using a numerical steady-state method and the application of a high cycle fatigue criterion. Computations were made with the Abaqus FE commercial software. Three cases are studied: rolling with or without sliding and skating. The numerical results give several types of mechanical responses: elastic or plastic shakedown. Otherwise, the results show that the location where the shear stress is maximal is not the same as where the risk of crack is the highest

Fatigue limit of induction hardened railway axles

“…Demands for higher reliability and safety of railway vehicles have brought intensive research of degradation processes in railway wheelsets and new approaches to wheelset design . Extremely high repeated contact stresses between wheels and rails cause rolling contact fatigue . A very serious form of damage to wheel seats is fretting fatigue, caused by small‐amplitude oscillatory movement of wheels in press‐fitted seat/axle joints …”

“…Demands for higher reliability and safety of railway vehicles have brought intensive research of degradation processes in railway wheelsets [1][2][3] and new approaches to wheelset design. 4 Extremely high repeated contact stresses between wheels and rails cause rolling contact fatigue.…”

Experimental evaluation of the fatigue life of hydraulic gate cast iron rollers

“…Future work may explore the use of heat‐treated stainless steel or high carbon steel roller path plates with heat treatment as an alternative material for roller paths. The results from this study showed that sliding occurred between the roller and the roller path, a phenomenon that, as Langueh et al point out, would be more severe on the fatigue life of rolling wheels than without sliding. Future work, whether experimental and/or theoretical, should address the effect of sliding on rolling fatigue.…”

Fatigue design of railway wheels: a probabilistic approach

“…The used criterion is recommended by a standard 19 in the railway industry and applied by authors on railway wheels. 1,17,20 Fatigue life model To evaluate the fatigue lifetime, an extension of the Dang Van criterion in the finite life domain is adopted. It consists in the use of a power law (Basquin like model, as introduced by Papadopoulos 21 ) relating the number of cycles N to failure to the fatigue stress τ DV by…”