Keywords: railway braking, tread braking, composite shoe, finite element analysis, on-track tests, experimental validation.

The widespread adoption of composite brake blocks on freight trains, driven by European regulations on rolling noise emissions, has led to new issues related to tread braking operations. The significantly lower thermal conductivity of composite materials with respect to traditional cast iron shoes can cause larger temperature increase on the wheel, raising concerns on thermal damage, wear mechanisms and wheel integrity. Therefore, the ability to predict the evolution of the thermal field with computationally efficient models represents a key challenge. This paper shows the validation of a simplified 2D finite element (FE) thermal model of a brake block with experimental data collected under real operating conditions. The model is developed in ANSYS considering a 2D plane geometry, to ensure computational efficiency. The model inputs, including the interface heat flux, are derived from onboard measurements collected during runs of a reference vehicle on the Bologna-San Donato test circuit. The developed model is validated against experimental data collected from an instrumented brake block mounted on the reference vehicle. Results show that, in spite of the simplifying assumptions, the model ensures good agreement in terms of the maximum predicted temperature.

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