Innovative wheel tread design aimed to tramcar-track interaction improvement when passing curves of a small radius

Abstract

Tramways in cities often ride in track curves of a small radius, which is followed by an increased effect of the vehicle on the track. In the rail-wheel contact often occurs creep in longitudinal as well as in lateral direction, which causes increase of riding resistance, wear in rail-wheel contact and noise operation. Exactly with the aim to reduce these undesirable effects we designed a tram bogie with steered wheelsets and with the double wheel tread. This inventions are registered by authors under Utility Model Nr. u201609015 and Patent Application Nr. a201701589. Description of proposed process of passing vehicle through strongly curved track is given in this paper. A comparison of creep velocities in rail-wheel contact results obtained by computer multibody simulations for a tram vehicle riding through a S-curve are presented. Purposefulness of proposed invention is investigated by constructing vehicle ride resistance dependence to the track curve radius.