Assessment of the curving performance of heavy haul trains under braking conditions

To study the curving performance of trains, 1D and 3D dynamic models of trains were built using nu- merical methods. The 1D model was composed of 210 simple wagons, each allowed only longitudinal motion; whereas the 3D model included three complicated wagons for which longitudinal, lateral, and vertical degrees of freedom were considered. Combined with the calculated results from the 1D model under braking conditions, the behavior of draft gears and brake shoes were added to the 3D model. The assessment of the curving performance of trains was focused on making comparisons between idling and braking conditions. The results indicated the following： when a train brakes on a curved track, the wheel-rail lateral force and derailment factor are greater than under idling conditions. Because the yawing movement of the wheelset is limited by brake shoes, the zone of wheel contact along the wheel tread is wider than under idling conditions. Furthermore, as the curvature becomes tighter, the traction ratio shows a nonlinear increasing trend, whether under idling or braking conditions. By increasing the brake shoe pressure, train steering becomes more difficult.

Dynamic performance of six-axle locomotive subjected to asymmetric brake shoe forces

To research the influence of asymmetric brake shoe forces(ABSF)induced by braking failure on the dynamic performance of six-axle locomotive,the static equilibrium model of three-axle bogie and dynamic model for locomotive are established.The coupling vibration equations of axle hung motor and wheelset are derived.For the air braking,the influence mechanism of ABSF on the wheel-rail asymmetric motion and force characteristics are discussed.It can be found that if the ABSF is applied in the front wheelset,all the wheelsets move laterally in the same direction.Once the ABSF occurs in the middle or rear one,other wheelsets may move laterally towards the opposite direction.The motion amplitude and direction of all wheelsets strictly depend on the resultant moment of suspension yawing moment and brake shoe asymmetric moment.For the asymmetric braking,the free lateral gap of axle-box could increase the wheelset motion amplitude,but could not change the moving direction.In both the straight line and curve,the ABSF may lead to wheelset misaligning motion,intensify the wheel-rail lateral dynamic interaction and deteriorate wheel-rail contact state.Especially for the steering wheelsets,the asymmetric braking increases the wheelset attack angle significantly,which forms the worst braking condition.

THERMAL CRACK AND WEAR OF RAIL WHEEL AND DEVELOPMENT OF THERMAL CRACKING PROOF WHEELS

The thermal cracking and wear mechanism of rail wheel tread have been studied.The results showed that the thermal cracking of rail wheel tread is related to the chemical composition (mainly the carbon content)and the hardness of the wheels.When the composite braking shoes are used,the rate of wear of the wheel tread is related to the fracture toughness of the newly-formed“white layer”i.e.the martensite.The thermal cracking proof wheels(55SiMn) so far developed has achieved significant operating results in practical use.

Research on temperature rise of hoisting machine disk brake

A mathematical model and finite element model for analysis of temperature rise of the hoisting machine brake sys- tem was constructed, limit conditions were defined, and the law of temperature rise of brake shoes during emergent brake course was analyzed and calculated by using finite element software. By analyzing the calculation results, the law of tempera- ture change of surface of brake disk and shoes during the braking process was found. The law of brake shoes surface tempera- ture distribution and the law of temperature change along with thickness of brake shoes at brake time 0.5 s, 1.0 s and 1.5 s was analyzed. A hoisting machine emergent braking test was carried out. Finally, the author concluded that velocity rebound in the process of hoisting machine emergent brake is due to decreased friction coefficient caused by the temperature rise of the brake shoes surface.

Real-time monitoring of brake shoe keys in freight cars

Condition monitoring ensures the safety of freight railroad operations. With the development of machine vision technology, visual inspection has become a principal means of condition monitoring. The brake shoe key （BSK） is an important component in the brake system, and its absence will lead to serious accidents. This paper presents a novel method for automated visual inspection of the BSK condition in freight cars. BSK images are first acquired by hardware devices. The subsequent in- spection process is divided into three stages： first, the region-of-interest （ROI） is segmented from the source image by an im- proved spatial pyramid matching scheme based on multi-scale census transform （MSCT）. To localize the BSK in the ROI, cen- sus transform （CT） on gradient images is developed in the second stage. Then gradient encoding histogram （GEH） features and linear support vector machines （SVMs） are used to generate a BSK localization classifier. In the last stage, a condition classifier is trained by SVM, but the features are extracted from gray images. Finally, the ROI, BSK localization, and condition classifiers are cascaded to realize a completely automated inspection system. Experimental results show that the system achieves a correct inspection rate of 99.2% and a speed of 5 frames/s, which represents a good real-time performance and high recognition accuracy.