Friction in wheel-rail contact: A model comprising interfacial fluids, surface roughness and temperature

A profound description of friction in wheel-rail contact plays an essential role for optimization of traction control strategies, as input quantity for railway simulations in general and for the estimation of wear and rolling contact fatigue. A multitude of wheel-rail contact models exists, however, traction-creepage curves obtained from measurements show quantitative and qualitative deviations. There are several phenomena which influence the traction-creepage characteristics: Mechanisms resulting from surface roughness, frictional heating or the presence of interfacial fluids can have a dominating influence on friction. In this paper, a new wheel-rail contact model, accounting for these influential parameters, will be presented. The presented model accounts for the interaction of an interfacial fluid model for combined boundary and mixed lubrication of rough surfaces with a wheel-rail contact model that additionally accounts for frictional heating. A quantitative comparison with measurements found in the literature is not conducted, since the exact conditions of the measurements are mostly unknown and parameters can easily be adjusted to fit the measurements. Emphasis is placed on the qualitative behavior of the model with respect to the measurements and good agreement is found. The dependence of the maximum traction coefficient on rolling velocity, surface roughness and normal load is studied under dry and water lubricated conditions. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.