Analysis of Heavy Haul Railway Wear on Wheel/Rail Contact Geometry

Nowadays railway transportation developed towards High-speed in passenger transport, heavy load in freight transport and High density in urban railway system. As a result, the rail/wheel wear become more and more serious, thus decreased the rail rigidity and changed the rail-wheel contact and impact the safety and comfort of railway transportation. In this paper, the authors are committed to make a precise prediction of rail wear in order to guide wheel/rail profile optimization and rail grinding cycle making by introduced a numerical model in predict of rail wear along with the passing gross weight grow. Firstly, a wheel-rail wear model based on non-Hertzian rolling contact theory and the energy dissipation principle are carried out with the help of vehicle-rail coupling dynamics software and MATLAB fixed-point iteration. Then, the wheel-rail contact geometry was calculated and the development of wear area, wear depth distribution along with the passing gross weight grow was calculated. At last, for the purpose of verifying the accuracy of the model, a comparison between the calculated results and the measured value was made. As a result of analysis the relationship between wear and passing gross weight, the impact of wear on the rail/wheel geometry is summarized.