The susceptibility of railway wheels to wear and rolling contact fatigue damage is influenced by the properties of the wheel material. These are influenced by the steel composition, wheel manufacturing process, and thermal and mechanical loading during operation. The in-service properties therefore vary with depth below the surface and with position across the wheel tread. This paper discusses ...

This paper presents a study of state estimation for active steering of profiled wheels. Fundamental characteristics of a solid-axle wheelset are explained and the potential benefits of active steering are discussed. The paper studies the non-linearity of the wheelset caused by profiled wheel-rail contact surfaces and develops a recursive non-linear Kalman filter to provide reliable and accurate...

This paper presents the responses of the railway vehicle and track components in terms of contact forces and displacements. The considered vehicle model is a five-DOF pitch-plane lumped parameter quarter car model supported on two-dimensional track systems comprising three layers. The car body is linked with the vehicle bogie through secondary suspension springs and damper elements, which is fu...

In the railway industry, slip control has always been essential due to the low friction between the wheels and the rail. In this master’s thesis we have gathered several slip control methods and evaluated them. These evaluations were performed in Matlab-Simulink on a slip process model of a railway vehicle. The objective with these evaluations were to show advantages and disadvantages with the ...

Abstract The interaction of the wheel and rail, being physical basis for movement trains, determines not only such important technical economic indicators railway transport as weight trains their speed, reliability operational life sets, but also foundations operation - safety train traffic. Therefore, studies problems wheel-rail friction pair are relevant in demand within framework a particula...

The increased speed and weight of modern trains puts the components of a railway track in a highly dynamic load situation. Irregularities of the wheels and rails induce substantial dynamic loads that have to be accounted for in the procedure of designing the railway track. The concrete sleeper is an essential part of the track structure and there is a growing demand for improved analytical tool...

The article presents the methodologies based on multi-body systems used to analyze the dynamics of rail vehicle in motion in a straight line. Study of the railway vehicles dynamics requires the creation of three mutually independent models: the model of the vehicle, the track model and a model of the wheel – rail contact. A railway vehicle model developed in the multi-body systems convention w ...

To have a safe and reliable railway system, nondestructive testing (NDT) methods are necessary to be implemented in order to avoid catastrophic failures. NDT methods also provide a powerful tool for proper maintenance of valuable railway system assets. Among various NDT methods, ultrasonic testing (UT) along with magnetic particle testing (MPT) and eddy current testing (ECT) play significant ro...

The paper presents results of multicriteria optimum design of an embedded rail structure (ERS). The optimality criteria are based on the requirements to railway tracks related to cost efficiency of the design, minimum noise emission and minimum wear of wheels and rails. The design variables comprise the material and geometry properties of ERS, namely elastic properties and volume of compound, s...