This study focused on the presence of a crack in the railway wheel’s subsurface and how it affects the wheel’s fatigue life. A 3-D FE-model was constructed to simulate the stress/strain fields that take place under the rolling contact of railway wheels on rails. To achieve computational efficiency and accuracy, a multiscale technique was employed. Different locations of the crack from the wheel surface were considered to detect the influence of a crack/defect on stress distribution of wheel/rail contact, as well as to possibly investigate the crack propagation rate and direction as a function of the crack’s distance to the wheel thread. Moreover, by changing the crack plane angle in each specific increment of loading, it may be possible to observe mixed mode crack growth behavior based on the crack’s orientation with respect to the wheel’s surface.
This report documents a test program to determine the material properties (chemical composition, tensile, and fatigue) at ambient and elevated tempera...
One of the most important safety-related tasks in the rail industry is early detection of defective rollingstock components. Railway wheels and wheel ...
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