Simulation of wheel and rail profile wear:a review of numerical models

The development of numerical models able to compute the wheel and rail profile wear is essential to improve the scheduling of maintenance operations required to restore the original profile shapes.This work surveys the main numerical models in the literature for the evaluation of the uniform wear of wheel and rail profiles.The standard structure of these tools includes a multibody simulation of the wheel-track coupled dynamics and a wear module implementing an experimental wear law.Therefore,the models are classified according to the strategy adopted for the worn profile update,ranging from models performing a single computation to models based on an online communication between the dynamic and wear modules.Nevertheless,the most common strategy nowadays relies on an iteration of dynamic simulations in which the profiles are left unchanged,with co-simulation techniques often adopted to increase the computational performances.Work is still needed to improve the accuracy of the current models.New experimental campaigns should be carried out to obtain refined wear coefficients and models,while strategies for the evaluation of both longitudinal and transversal wear,also considering the effects of tread braking,should be implemented to obtain accurate damage models.

Application of On-Line Rail Milling in Rail Maintenance of High-Speed Railways

On-line rail milling technologies have been applied in rail maintenance, and are proving to be efficient and environmental friendly. Based on the field data of on-line rail milling, a program for comparing rail transverse profiles before and after milling was designed and the root mean square （RMS） amplitude of longitudinal profile was calculated. The application of on-line rail milling technology in removing rail surface defects, re-profiling railhead transverse profiles, smoothing longitudinal profiles and improving welding joint irregularity were analyzed. The results showed that the on-line rail milling technology can remove the surface defects at the rail crown and gauge comer perfectly, re-profile railhead transverse profile with a tolerance of - 1. 0-0.2 ram, improve longitudinal irregularity of rail surface, with the RMS amplitude of irregularity reduced more than 50% and the number of out-of- limited amplitude reduced by 42% - 82% in all wavelength ranges. The improvement of welding joint irregularity depends on the amount of metal removal determined by the milling equipment and the primal amplitude.