Parametric study on the fatigue life of railways under rolling contact fatigue by three-dimensional numerical analysis

The current paper presents the results of parametric analyses on the stress intensity factor (SIF) of railways with inclined cracks under rolling contact fatigue (RCF). A 3D finite element (FE) model was proposed to demonstrate the shear mechanism in RCF. The feasibility of the suggested numerical model was verified through the SIF (K) obtained from advanced 3D FE analysis compared with existing 2D FE results. Based on the series of FE analyses, the sensitivity analysis on the cracked depth, surface/crack friction coefficients, and inclined angle, which mainly affected SIF history at the cracked tip, was examined. SIF distributions for various locations of the wheel along the cracked tip were also presented.