A study of the head checks development on the low rail and the contact condition between wheel/rail on its appearance site

Abstract

Rail is the peculiar element constructing the railway system. The phenomenon such as wear or defect of rail will be caused by the repeated wheel and rail rolling contact on the rail surface. Especially, the cracks called head checks are generated continuously on the gauge corner side of the high rail due to the plastic deformation caused by the severe contact with the wheels. The occurrence situations and the initiation factors of the head checks are widely known because the head checks are generated in many curved sections of which radii are about 800m. On the other hand, some head checks are confirmed to appear on the low rail in the curved section. However, the occurrence situations of the head checks of the low rail are not clarified because the appearance of this type of the head checks is limited. Furthermore, the initiation factors of this type of the head check are also not clarified. In this research, we conducted the site investigation and the analysis of the rail which has the head checks to clarify the appearance situations of the head checks of the low rail. In addition, we conducted the wheel and the rail contact analysis by use of the multi-body dynamics tool by constructing a model of the site of the head checks appearance of the low rail to examine the initiation factors of the head checks of the low rail.

Keywords

• head checks
• low rail
• wheel / rail
• rolling contact
• multibody dynamics
• simpack