Study on numerical method to predict wheel/rail profile evolution due to wear

A wheel/rail profile wear prediction methodology is developed and applied to the wheel/rail disc test about the wear of flange and gauge. Three-dimensional nonlinear finite element dynamic analysis code ABAQUS is used in the simulation of wheel/rail disc rolling contact process. The implicit and explicit finite element methods have been coupled to analyze wheel/rail disc rolling contact process. In the FEM (finite element method) simulation, a material model with bilinear kinematic hardening property was used. The wear model is based on Archard's wear model. A cubic spline interpolation algorithm was applied on wear distribution and the updated wheel/rail profiles. Laplacian smoothing with area weights is used to smooth the meshes of wheel and rail disc. The simulation results are compared with measurements of laboratory wear test and the effectiveness of the wear prediction methodology was verified. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier B.V.