Effect of passenger car curving on rail corrugation at a curved track

The paper presents a corrugation calculation model, which considers Kalker's non-Hertzian rolling contact theory to be modified, a material wear model and a vertical and lateral coupling dynamics of a half passenger car and a curved track. The dynamics characters of the curved track model in frequency domain were investigated by the commercial finite element code ANSYS, and some results concerning rail corrugation are presented in this paper. During a passenger car passing a curved track the dynamical performance of the vehicle and track and the initiation and growth of the curved rail corrugation are analyzed with the present corrugation calculation model. In the numerical calculation, two track states are investigated. One is that the track does not have any congenital defect except for the discrete rail support by sleepers. The other is that the track has a lateral dent on the gauge corner of the high rail. The rail corrugations analyzed are attributed to the material wear mechanism. The numerical results obtained indicate that (1) a high passing frequency corrugation initiates on the smooth running surface of the curved rail during the first passing of the passenger car through the curved track without defects; (2) the initial corrugation develops quickly and its passing frequencies change with an increase of passenger car passage; (3) the interaction of the leading wheelset of the bogie and the curved rails causes more severe corrugation and wear on the rail running surface than that of the trailing wheelset of the same bogie; (4) discrete rail support by sleepers is the congenital defect leading to rail corrugation formation. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.