A Wheel Wear Prediction Model Based on the Wheel-Rail Rigid Slip Considering Curve Contact Area

Distribution of the wheel-rail rigid slip is a crucial parameter in predicting wheel wear.A new method based on the curve contact area is proposed to calculate the curve distributed wheel-rail rigid slip and the wheel wear distribution.The wheel wear distributions of Chinese CRH 2 EMU are calculated using the curve contact area, and those calculated using the planar contact area are compared.The simulation results indicate that the wheel-rail rigid slip based on the curve contact area is the same as that based on the plane contact area at the wheel-rail initial contact point; however, it is lower than that based on the plane contact area at other positions.Under the effect of different wheel-rail rigid slip distributions, the predicted wheel wear for the curve contact area achieves a larger depth than that for the plane contact area at the position closer to the flange; in comparison, it achieves a smaller wear depth than that for the plane contact area at the position far from the flange.