Advance contact mechanics and damage modeling for wheel and rail profile optimization processes applications (RV42)

Project Coordinator - KTH Rail Vehicles

Project Leader at KTH - Carlos Casanueva

Scientists at KTH - Elham Khoramzad, Saeed Hossein Nia, Carlos Casanueva

Sources of Funding - KTH Internal Funding

Every year a substantial amount of money and resources are dedicated to vehicle and rail maintenance due to various damage sources. One of the most significant damage sources on rails and vehicles comes from wear and RCF of wheels and rails due to high loads during constant contact.

With the rising population of today’s societies, a great demand for high capacity and faster trains has arisen, which results in an increase in contact loads and more vehicle travels on the tracks. Therefore, it gives rise to more and perhaps more severe damages due to rail and wheel contact. Hence, it is crucial to work on wheel and rail interaction to minimize these damages.

One solution is to improve wheel and rail alignment on different track sections, which can be achieved through optimization methods. Currently, most rail and wheel damage calculation models need a great deal of time to be solved and putting them in optimization algorithms will be even more time-consuming. Therefore, it is essential to come up with a fast and, at the same time, accurate damage model, which can be used in optimization models to calculate minor wear and RCF possible for different track and vehicle conditions.