Determination of the pressure between the wheel of the moving railcar and rails subject to the defects

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the modeling of the behavior of railway tracks under a dynamic load of wheel set taking into account the elastic, viscous-elastic and elastic-plastic properties of the interaction region between two solid bodies and elastic anisotropic properties of the top structure of a railway track, which differ in three main directions: along the rails, along the sleepers and vertically downwards. Based on the model of the wheel-rail contact the maximum stresses are determined which take place in the rail in the presence of wheel defects (e.g. flat spot, weld-on deposit, etc.). In this paper, the solution of the inverse problem is presented, i.e., investigation of the influence of the strength of a wheel impact upon rails on wheel defects as well as evaluation of the stresses emerging in rails.