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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 110
PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE
Edited by: J. Pombo
Paper 156

Validation of Finite Element Simulations for Wheel-Rail Normal Contact

F. Dörner, T. Bettinger, J. Lekue and C. Schindler

Institute for Railway Vehicles and Transport Systems (IFS), RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
, "Validation of Finite Element Simulations for Wheel-Rail Normal Contact", in J. Pombo, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 156, 2016. doi:10.4203/ccp.110.156
Keywords: wheel-rail contact, probabilistic finite element analysis, pressure measurement film, validation.

Summary
The understanding of the conditions in the wheel-rail normal contact is key to its wear, fatigue and guidance analyses. The exact determination of the size and position of the contact area is difficult to obtain and normally done with simulations. The same applies to the pressure distribution. Previous studies show that the wheel-rail normal contact is rather sensitive to the input parameters. Therefore, the validation seems important to confirm the simulation results. The aim of the study, reported in this paper, is to calibrate the use of pressure measurement films for the measurement of the contact area of the wheel-rail normal contact and to use these results in a validation of finite element (FE) simulations. These FE simulations are performed in a probabilistic manner to enable the comparison of the simulative and experimental results.

The study shows that the exact measurement of the wheel-rail normal contact area is difficult to obtain as well as its simulation. Nevertheless, the simulations and measurements results show acceptable agreement. Further, the study shows that the use of pressure measurement film is appropriate for the measurement process.

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