THERMO-MECHANICAL CRACKING OF RAILWAY WHEEL

• Thermo-mechanical wheel tread damages are common in railway wheels. While the damagemagnitude is limited this is a rather benign phenomenon. However under harsher operationalconditions (winter conditions, poorly tuned damping/suspension, poorly matched wheel–railcontact profiles etc) the extent of the problem may increase dramatically and lead to epidemicsof wheel damages. Since this calls for wheel re-profiling, the result may be extensiveoperational disturbances.The presentation deals with thermo-mechanical damage. In practice one of the failuremodes, thermal cracking or rolling contact fatigue, usually dominates. However, it is mostlikely that the combined thermal and rolling contact loading will have an influence in increasingthe resulting damage as compared to both phenomena acting separately.In the literature there are a multitude of studies on both thermal and rolling contactloading. analyses of the combined load case are however scarce. One major reason for this isthat a combined loading makes a simplification to 2D very cumbersome (not to say futile).Here, a numerical study of the impact of simultaneous thermal and mechanical loading on arailway wheel tread as imposed by braking and rolling contact is presented. 3D finite element(FE) simulations of the thermo-mechanical problem featuring a material model which accountsfor thermal expansion and plastic deformations are carried out. Both pure rolling and tractiverolling are considered. The results indicate a significant influence of the thermal loading onthe resulting stress/strain response also in cases of relatively moderate temperature increases.In particular, a combination of thermal loading and high traction rolling is found to be verydetrimental.The resulting damage of the wheel tread is manifested by the formation of small surfacecracks. In cases of high thermal loading, these cracks will evolve to deep radial cracks thatcan, in a worst-case scenario, cause catastrophic wheel failures. Since this is a potential safetyproblem it is important to understand the driving mechanisms behind these cracks.To this end, a numerical study of thermal cracking of a wheel subjected to high thermalloading was carried out. The analysis features a computationally efficient approach where2D FE stress analysis owing to thermal loading during braking and subsequent cooling iscombined with an analytical evaluation of resulting stress intensity factors of a radially orientedsurface crack in the wheel tread. The analysis identifies critical sizes for when existingsurface cracks are prone to propagate under thermal loading and resulting crack lengths afterpropagation. The results imply that fully functional brake systems are not likely to inducethermal crack propagation under normal stop braking, but that with pre-existing defects asevere drag braking due to malfunctioning brakes may cause very deep cracking. Further theanalysis concludes the thermal cracking to be a (more or less) static phenomenon related tothe most severe brake cycle. In other words: later brake cycles of similar or lower severitywill not cause any significant propagation of existing cracks. To further validate the analysisof the semi-analytical analysis, preliminary 3D FE-simulations have been performed.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Maskinteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Mechanical Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

critical crack sizes

thermal cracking

railway tread braking

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