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The paper describes the Japanese understanding and practice with regard to wheel rail interface problems and their management. Rolling contact fatigue, especially squat defects, grinding, corrugations and lubrication, have been considered. The understanding has been developed through a combination of theoretical modeling, laboratory‐based experiments and field trials. Measures have been introduced to mitigate the detrimental effects of these problems and are resulting in benefits to the Japanese railway companies. However, more work is required to better understand wheel rail interface problems and to provide effective solutions.

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The finite-element and boundary-element methods were applied to develop the lowstress and low-noise lightweight railway wheel. First, stress analyses for the existing wheels under the condition of drag braking or track loading were performed. Following these analyses, a design methodology was developed and applied, leading to the development of new plate shapes of the wheel, whose stresses generated were lower than those of conventional wheels. Candidate plate shapes were selected based on the analyses. Next, eigenvalue analyses and transient dynamic analyses were carried out for the wheels. At the same time, to verify the analytical results, these wheels were manufactured and experiments implemented. Finally, acoustic analyses were performed and results compared with those obtained by field measurements. From this study, a new plate shape of the lightweight railway wheel was obtained, which reduces the radiated noise as well as the maximum stresses generated in the plate region to a remarkable extent.

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