Railway wheel profile fine-tuning system for profile recommendation

Abstract

This paper develops a wheel profile fine-tuning system (WPFTS) that comprehensively considers the influence of wheel profile on wheel damage, vehicle stability, vehicle safety, and passenger comfort. WPFTS can recommend one or more optimized wheel profiles according to train operators’ needs, e.g., reducing wheel wear, mitigating the development of wheel out-of-roundness (OOR), improving the shape stability of the wheel profile. Specifically, WPFTS includes four modules: (I) a wheel profile generation module based on the rotary-scaling fine-tuning (RSFT) method; (II) a multi-objective generation module consisting of a rigid multi-body dynamics simulation (MBS) model, an analytical model, and a rigid–flexible MBS model, for generating 11 objectives related to wheel damage, vehicle stability, vehicle safety, and passenger comfort; (III) a weight assignment module consisting of an adaptive weight assignment strategy and a manual weight assignment strategy; and (IV) an optimization module based on radial basis function (RBF) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Finally, three cases are introduced to show how WPTFS recommends a wheel profile according to train operators’ needs. Among them, a wheel profile with high shape stability, a wheel profile for mitigating the development of wheel OOR, and a wheel profile considering hunting stability and derailment safety are developed, respectively.

Wheel profile optimization procedure to minimize flange wear considering profile wear evolution

“…As wear prediction involves multiple profile updates, change in the contact geometry resulting from the profile wear evolution can be automatically considered in evaluating the objective function (equation ( 3)). That is, the way the wear simulation is used in the proposed profile optimization procedure is fundamentally different from those in the literatures, [8][9][10][11][12][13] in which wear simulations are used only after the optimized profile is obtained for the wear performance evaluation. In this study, the wear prediction capability is fully integrated into the profile optimization process such that a total wear-induced material loss can be minimized under design constraints.…”

“…3 Therefore, wheel and rail profile optimization has been explored to minimize the wear and surface fatigue in the literatures. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] An extensive review on the wheel profile optimization is provided in the literature by Ye et al 12 In the wheel and rail profile optimization, a wear index is commonly utilized. 6,7,[12][13][14] Minimization of a wear index leads to minimization of frictional power in the contact area, which is known to be closely corelated with the wear rate in wheel-rail rolling contact problems.…”

“…[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] An extensive review on the wheel profile optimization is provided in the literature by Ye et al 12 In the wheel and rail profile optimization, a wear index is commonly utilized. 6,7,[12][13][14] Minimization of a wear index leads to minimization of frictional power in the contact area, which is known to be closely corelated with the wear rate in wheel-rail rolling contact problems. [15][16][17][18] Wheel tread contact, in general, falls into mild wear, where the wear rate increases as the wear index increases.…”

“…11 For parameterization of a wheel geometry in the profile optimization, a NURBS curve was introduced by Lin et al, 14 while Ye et al proposed to generate a new profile by a sequential process of the profile rotation, adjustment, and scaling. 12,13 To evaluate the wear performance of the optimized profiles obtained in these studies, wear simulations were conducted after the optimized profiles were obtained. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Despite the extensive studies on the profile optimization to mitigate wheel wear in curve negotiations, optimization is performed for only the initial profile.…”

“…12,13 To evaluate the wear performance of the optimized profiles obtained in these studies, wear simulations were conducted after the optimized profiles were obtained. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Despite the extensive studies on the profile optimization to mitigate wheel wear in curve negotiations, optimization is performed for only the initial profile. As the profile is worn, the wheel-rail contact geometry characteristics are altered accordingly; thus an optimized profile would not ensure the optimum performance after the profile wear becomes significant.…”