Thermal damage caused by frictional heat of rolling-sliding contact is one of the most important failure forms of wheel and rail. Many studies of wheel-rail frictional heating have been devoted to the temperature field, but few literatures focus on wheel-rail thermal stress caused by frictional heating. However, the wheel-rail creepage is one of important influencing factors of the thermal stress In this paper, a thermo-mechanical coupling model of wheel-rail rolling-sliding contact is developed using thermo-elasto-plastic finite element method. The effect of the wheel-rail elastic creepage on the distribution of heat flux is investigated using the numerical model in which the temperature-dependent material properties are taken into consideration. The moving wheel-rail contact force and the frictional heating are used to simulate the wheel rolling on the rail. The effect of the creepage on the temperature rise, thermal strain, residual stress and residual strain under wheel-rail sliding-rolling contact are investigated. The investigation results show that the thermally affected zone exists mainly in a very thin layer of material near the rail contact surface during the rolling-sliding contact. Both the temperature and thermal strain of rail increase with increasing creepage. The residual stresses induced by the frictional heat in the surface layer of rail appear to be tensile. When the creepage is large, the frictional heat has a significant influence on the residual stresses and residual strains of rail. This paper develops a thermo-meehanical coupling model of wheel-rail rolling-sliding contact, and the obtained results can help to understand the mechanism of wheel/rail frictional thermal fatigue.
The running safety of high-speed trains has become a major concern of the current railway research with the rapid development of high-speed railways around the world.The basic safety requirement is to prevent the derailment.The root causes of the dynamic derailment of highspeed trains operating in severe environments are not easy to identify using the field tests or laboratory experiments.Numerical simulation using an advanced train–track interaction model is a highly efficient and low-cost approach to investigate the dynamic derailment behavior and mechanism of high-speed trains.This paper presents a three-dimensional dynamic model of a high-speed train coupled with a ballast track for dynamic derailment analysis.The model considers a train composed of multiple vehicles and the nonlinear inter-vehicle connections.The ballast track model consists of rails,fastenings,sleepers,ballasts,and roadbed,which are modeled by Euler beams,nonlinear spring-damper elements,equivalent ballast bodies,and continuous viscoelastic elements,in which the modal superposition method was used to reduce the order of the partial differential equations of Euler beams.The commonly used derailment safety assessment criteria around the world are embedded in the simulation model.The train–track model was then used to investigate the dynamic derailment responses of a high-speed train passing over a buckled track,in which the derailmentmechanism and train running posture during the dynamic derailment process were analyzed in detail.The effects of train and track modelling on dynamic derailment analysis were also discussed.The numerical results indicate that the train and track modelling options have a significant effect on the dynamic derailment analysis.The inter-vehicle impacts and the track flexibility and nonlinearity should be considered in the dynamic derailment simulations.
This paper presents a detailed investigation, via field experiment, into the mechanism of high-order polygonal wear of wheels of a new type of high-speed train. The investigation was carried out during the performance acceptance test of the train and its initial commercial operation. The investigation covered the performance acceptance test of 150 000 km and the commercial operation of about 150 000 km. In the performance acceptance test of the first stage of about 70 000 km, at 200-250 km/h with full loading and sometimes overloading by 30%, the serious polygonal wear of 23-order took place on all the wheels of the train, and was measured and analyzed in detail. All the potygonized wheels were re-profiled because the polygonal wear had caused strong vibration and damage to the train parts. After re-profiling, the vibration of the train and track and the wear status of the wheels were measured and analyzed at different test mileages according to the polygonal wear situation of the wheels. The measured vibration of the train includes the accelerations at different positions of a motor car and a trail car. The vibration modes of the key parts of the bogies of the two cars were calculated. Meanwhile, the track resonant frequencies were investigated at the site. The purpose of the above tests and analysis is try to find the frequency of work mode matching the passing frequency of the high-order wheel polygon. The present investigation shows that one of the working models causes the formation and development of the high-order wheel polygonal wear. The growth of this wear was effectively reduced through the frequent changing of the running speed of the train operating on the way back and forth every day.
