A Study of the Factors Affecting Flange-Climb Derailment in Railway Vehicles

Abstract

Avoiding flange climb derailment is one main issue with ensuring the running safety of railway vehicles. This paper discusses the different causes that can lead to the derailment of a railway wheel, particularly in the light of different derailment criteria used by the standards or proposed by various researchers.Furthermore the paper presents two case studies, one for a vehicle with solid axles and one for a bogie with independently rotating wheels, reporting a description of the derailment case and discussing the causes that led to derailment, by making combined use of measurements and numerical simulation.Based on these exemplary cases, some conclusions are drawn concerning the validity of the derailment criteria presently used by the standards in force.

Assessment of derailment risk in railway turnouts through quasi-static analysis and dynamic simulation

“…The short straight lines or sharp curves are inevitably set before the turnouts with small crossing angles. It was found that sharp curves tend to produce large Y/Q values on the flanging wheel in Diana et al., 26 as a result, this may cause the wheel flange to contact the rail gauge corner before leading wheelset enters the switch panel. Therefore, this section analysed the influence of the curve radius and the length of straight lines before turnouts on the passing performance.…”