Simulation of damage in railway crossings - a comparison of rail steel grades R350HT and rolled Mn13

Paper in proceeding, 2018

The application of a multidisciplinary methodology for the prediction of rail damage in railway crossings is demonstrated. Two rail steel grades are compared: R350HT and rolled Mn13. Based on a load sequence designed by Latin hypercube sampling considering the variation in traffic conditions, the results include the calculated plastic deformation and wear after a load collective corresponding to 0.8 MGT of traffic. The methodology has been introduced in earlier work but is here improved in terms of computational efficiency. Wheel-rail normal contact is solved using a Hertzian-based metamodel accounting for the inelastic material response. It is shown that the rolled Mn13 crossing experiences more ratchetting strain than the R350HT counterpart.