An innovative and efficient method for reverse design of wheel-rail profiles

Abstract

Well-designed wheel-rail profiles are not only helpful in achieving expected dynamic vehicle performance but also in extending the service lives of wheels and rails. In this paper, a method for designing wheel-rail profiles is presented based on the rolling radius difference. This method consists of three parts, i.e., the reverse designs of wheel profiles, symmetric rail profiles and non-symmetric rail profiles. A reverse design method for wheel-rail profiles that can obtain smooth profile formed by quadratic curves is established according to the mapping relation between the rolling radius difference and the wheel-rail profile gradient. This reverse design method is verified and an example for optimizing the design of wheel profiles is introduced. Results show that the design method is effective and efficient. The static/dynamic indexes of the optimized wheel profiles matched with CHN60 can be greatly improved. According to the comparative analysis of wheel-rail contact and dynamic performance, when the lateral displacement reaches 6 mm, the maximum contact stress will be distributed evenly and can be decreased by 184.4 MPa compared to that of existing profiles, while the critical speed can be increased by 10.8% and the running stability can be improved by around 7%. It can be seen that this method is useful for the design of new wheel-rail profiles and optimization of existing wheel-rail profiles.