Simulation of railway wheel profile development due to wear - influence of disc braking and contact environment

This paper addresses issues related to braking and wheel-rail contact conditions in the context of wheel wear simulation. The KTH approach to the topic includes Archard's wear model with associated wear maps, vehicle dynamics simulation and railway network definition. In previous work at KTH certain variations in operating conditions have been accounted for through empirically estimated average scaling factors. The objective of the current research is to be able to include such variations in the set of simulations. In particular the influence of disc braking as well as varying friction and lubrication conditions are investigated. Both environmental factors like moist and contamination and deliberate lubrication need to be considered. As part of the associated contact analysis the influence of local elastic deformation on the sliding velocity has been separately investigated. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.