Jingmang Xu

Effects of profile wear on wheel–rail contact conditions and dynamic interaction of vehicle and turnout

Severe wear is a common damage mechanism in railway turnouts, which strongly affects the dynamic performance of railway vehicles and maintenance costs of tracks. This article explores the effects of profile wear on contact behaviors in the wheel–rail/switch contact and dynamic interaction, and nominal and measured worn turnout rail profiles are used as boundary conditions of wheel–rail contact. The calculation of the dynamic loads and the resultant contact stresses and internal stresses makes it possible to rationally design railway turnouts and correctly select the material to be applied for their components. For these reasons, the multi-body system SIMPACK and finite element software ANSYS are used to calculate the features of load and subsequently distributions of contact stresses and internal stresses in the regions of wheel–turnout components. The results show that profile wear disturbs the distribution of wheel–rail contact point pairs, changes the positions of wheel–rail contact points along the longitudinal direction, and affects the dynamic interaction of vehicle and turnout. For the measured profile in this article, profile wear aggravates vertical dynamic responses significantly but improves lateral dynamic responses. Profile wear disturbs the normal contact situations between the wheel and switch rail and worsens the stress state of the switch rail.

Comparison of calculation methods for wheel–switch rail normal and tangential contact

Wheel–rail contact is more complex in railway a turnout than in ordinary track and, thus, necessitates an advanced model to simulate dynamic interaction and predict rail wear. The main aim of the present work is to assess the application of several wheel–rail rolling contact models in railway turnout. For normal contact problems, wheel–rail contact models based on four different methods are compared: Hertz theory, the semi-Hertzian method, CONTACT, and the finite element method. The assessment is based on the results of contact patch shape and size and contact pressure for several wheelset lateral displacements. The load is set to a constant and equal to static wheel load. Calculations are performed at the section of switch rail head with width 35 mm in CN60-1100-1:18 turnout; both standard and worn rail profiles are accounted for. For tangential contact problems, four corresponding methods are assessed, based on the calculation of creep forces, distribution of the stick/slide region and computational efficiency: Shen–Hedrick–Elkins theory, FASTSIM, improved FASTSIM based on semi-Hertzian method, and CONTACT. It is found that the normal contact problems solved by the semi-Hertzian method and CONTACT correlate well with the finite element method, and the tangential contact problems solved by improved FASTSIM and CONTACT are quite favorable. The conclusions of this work can provide some guidance for contact model selection in the dynamic simulation and wear prediction of railway turnout.

Experimental Research on Compression Properties of Cement Asphalt Mortar due to Drying and Wetting Cycle

Uniaxial compression test of cement asphalt (CA) mortar specimens, due to drying and wetting cycle of 0, 2, 4 and 8 times, is carried out by using the electronic universal test machine, with the strain rate ranging from 1 × 10−5 s−1 to 1 × 10−2 s−1. The effects of strain rate and drying and wetting cycle time on the compressive strength, elasticity modulus, and stress-strain full curve are investigated. Experimental results show that the strain-stress full curve of CA mortar is affected obviously by strain rate and drying and wetting cycle time. The compressive strength and elasticity modulus increase with the strain rate under the same drying and wetting cycle time. The compressive strength and elasticity modulus decrease with the increase of drying and wetting cycle time in the same strain rate. The lower the strain rate is, the greater the compressive strength and elasticity modulus of CA mortar decrease. When the strain rate is 1 × 10−5 s−1 and drying and wetting cycle time is 8, the largest reduction of average compressive strength of CA mortar is 40.48%, and the largest reduction of elasticity modulus of CA mortar is 35.51%, and the influence of drying and wetting cycle on the compressive strength of CA mortar is greater than its influence on the elasticity modulus.

Longitudinal force measurement in continuous welded rail with bi-directional FBG strain sensors

In this work, a new method has been proposed to accurately determine longitudinal force measurement in continuous welded rail (CWR) with bi-directional fiber Bragg grating (B-FBGs) strain sensors (vertically and longitudinally installed according to the axis of rail). The response of B-FBGs has been theoretically analyzed by binding on CWR under different restrained conditions, where the coefficient of strain sensitivity of FBG is calibrated by its temperature sensitivity. Then the proposed sensor structure has been installed at two elaborately selected points on the subgrade on a Chinese high-speed railway in field. The experiment lasts for about 23 h. During the experiment, the rail temperature varied by about 7.8 °C and the differentials of relative value of wavelength change of B-FBGs of two points were 1.7850 × 10−5 and 1.4969 × 10−5. The maximum difference between the experimental and theoretical results is 13.8 kN. The experimental results agree with the theoretical analysis very well. To guarantee the measurement accuracy of over 95%, the ratio of strain sensitivity coefficients of two FBG sensors of B-FBGs structure at one test point shall be within 0.78 ~ 1.22.

Optimization of Rail Profiles to Improve Vehicle Running Stability in Switch Panel of High-Speed Railway Turnouts

A method for optimizing rail profiles to improve vehicle running stability in switch panel of high-speed railway turnouts is proposed in this paper. The stock rail profiles are optimized to decrease the rolling radii difference (RRD). Such characteristics are defined through given rail profiles, and the target rolling radii difference is defined as a function of lateral displacements of wheel set. The improved sequential quadratic programming (SQP) method is used to generate a sequence of improving profiles leading to the optimum one. The wheel-rail contact geometry and train-turnout dynamic interaction of the optimized profiles and those of nominal profiles are calculated for comparison. Without lateral displacement of wheel set, the maximum RRD in relation to a nominal profile will be kept within 0.5 mm–1 mm, while that in relation to an optimized profile will be kept within 0.3 mm–0.5 mm. For the facing and trailing move of vehicle passing the switch panel in the through route, the lateral wheel-rail contact force is decreased by 34.0% and 29.9%, respectively, the lateral acceleration of car body is decreased by 41.9% and 40.7%, respectively, and the optimized profile will not greatly influence the vertical wheel-rail contact force. The proposed method works efficiently and the results prove to be quite reasonable.

Numerical analysis of the effect of track parameters on the wear of turnout rails in high-speed railways

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.

Stiffness Characteristics of High-Speed Railway Turnout and the Effect on the Dynamic Train-Turnout Interaction

Track stiffness in railway turnouts is variable due to differences in structural composition along the longitudinal direction, which will lead to severe dynamic interaction between train and turnout. In this paper, a transient analysis model is presented to investigate the stiffness characteristics of high-speed railway turnouts based on the finite element method and is applied to optimise the stiffness of railway turnouts. Furthermore, the effect of the stiffness variations on the dynamic train-turnout interaction is analysed. The calculation results show that the track stiffness characteristics are similar in the main and diverging line of railway turnout, except for the check rail sections. Due to the existence of shared baseplates and spacer blocks between different rails, the stiffness variations in the crossing panel are most severe in high-speed railway turnouts. The stiffness differences (calculated as the ratio of the maximum and minimum stiffness) of the longitudinal and lateral direction for Chinese number 18 ballasted turnout are 216% and 229%, respectively. The graded stiffness of the tie pads has been redesigned to optimise the stiffness of railway turnout based on the transient analysis model and the stiffness differences of the turnout are decreased. Altogether, the dynamic train-turnout interaction is enhanced remarkably by considering the turnout’s stiffness characteristics.

Numerical investigation on effect of the relative motion of stock/switch rails on the load transfer distribution along the switch panel in high-speed railway turnout

ABSTRACT In railway turnout, the stock rail and switch rail are separated to enable the vehicle changing among the tracks, and they are provided with different rail resilience level on the baseplate. Therefore, there will be vertical relative motion between stock/switch rails under the wheel loads, and the relative motion will affect consequentially the wheel–rail contact conditions. A method is developed to investigate the effect of the relative motion of stock/switch rails on the load transfer distribution along the switch panel in high-speed railway turnout. First, the rigid wheel–rail contact points of stock/switch rails are calculated based on the trace line method, and then the contact status is determined by the presented equations, finally, the distribution of wheel–rail contact forces of stock/switch rails is obtained based on the continuity of interface displacements and forces which using an approximate surface deformation method. Some parametric studies have been performed, such as the lateral displacement of wheel set, the vertical contact forces, the wheel profiles and the vertical stiffness of rail pad. The results of the parametric study are presented and discussed.

Comparison of non-Hertzian modeling approaches for wheel–rail rolling contact mechanics in the switch panel of a railway turnout

Due to the complicated wheel–rail contact relation of railway turnouts, it is necessary to select a reasonable rolling contact model to simulate the vehicle–turnout dynamics and wheel–rail damages. This paper mainly aims to evaluate the calculation accuracy and efficiency of different non-Hertzian modeling approaches in solving normal and tangential wheel–rail contact problems of railway turnouts. Four different non-Hertzian approaches, namely CONTACT, Kik–Piotrowski, Ayasse–Chollet, and Sichani methods are compared and analyzed. The above four models are built considering the relative motion of stock/switch rails. A wheel profile called LMA contacting with stock/switch rails (head width 35 mm) of CN60-1100-1:18 turnouts is selected as the object of analysis. The normal contact problems are evaluated by the wheel–rail contact areas, shapes, and normal contact pressures. The assessment of tangential contact problems is based on the creep curves, tangential contact stresses, and distribution of the stick/slip region. In addition, a contrast analysis is performed on the calculation efficiencies of the four approaches. It is found that the normal and tangential contact results calculated based on the Sichani method coincide well with those obtained according to CONTACT, and the calculation efficiency is about 262 times that of CONTACT. The conclusions can provide some guidance to the selection of wheel–rail rolling contact approach in the simulation of vehicle–turnout dynamics and wheel–rail damages.

Theoretical 3D Model for Quasistatic Critical Derailment Coefficient of Railway Vehicles and a Simplified Formula

The formula for the critical derailment coefficient concerning wheelset yaw angles and wheel-rail creep forces is deduced based on the three-dimensional (3D) force equilibrium relationship in the critical wheel derailment state under quasistatic assumption. The change of critical derailment coefficient and wheel-rail contact patch normal force/creep force as wheelset yaw angles change under the influence of the friction coefficient, maximum flange angle, and net wheel weight is analyzed according to the Kalker linear creep theory and Shen-Hedrick-Elkins creep theory. Analysis shows that the wheel-rail friction coefficient and maximum wheel flange contact angle can significantly influence the critical wheel derailment coefficient, further proving the conservative results when the critical Nadal derailment coefficient is adopted in analyzing wheel derailment under small wheelset yaw angles. To realize easy calculation and application of critical 3D derailment coefficients, the ratio of lateral creep force to longitudinal creep force of wheel-rail contact patches under critical quasistatic wheel derailment conditions is deduced. A simplified calculation method of critical derailment coefficients is presented based on this. The calculation accuracy is verified, proving that it can satisfy engineering application.