Metamodelling of wheel–rail normal contact in railway crossings with elasto-plastic material behaviour
Journal article, 2019

A metamodel considering material plasticity is presented for computationally efficient prediction of wheel–rail normal contact in railway switches and crossings (S&C). The metamodel is inspired by the contact theory of Hertz, and for a given material, it computes the size of the contact patch and the maximum contact pressure as a function of the normal force and the local curvatures of the bodies in contact. The model is calibrated based on finite element (FE) simulations with an elasto-plastic material model and is demonstrated for rail steel grade R350HT. The error of simplifying the contact geometry is discussed and quantified. For a moderate difference in contact curvature between wheel and rail, the metamodel is able to accurately predict the size of the contact patch and the maximum contact pressure. The accuracy is worse when there is a small difference in contact curvature, where the influence of variation in curvature within the contact patch becomes more significant. However, it is shown that such conditions lead to contact stresses that contribute less to accumulated plastic deformation. The metamodel allows for a vast reduction of computational effort compared to the original FE model as it is given in analytical form.

Metamodel

FEM

switches & crossings

Hertz

Plastic deformation

wheel–rail contact mechanics

Author

Rostyslav Skrypnyk

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Dynamics

Jens Nielsen

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Dynamics

Björn Pålsson

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Dynamics

Magnus Ekh

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Material and Computational Mechanics

Engineering with Computers

0177-0667 (ISSN) 1435-5663 (eISSN)

Vol. 35 1 139-155

Subject Categories

Other Mechanical Engineering

Computer Systems

Areas of Advance

Transport

DOI

10.1007/s00366-018-0589-3

More information

Latest update

2/15/2021