Rolling stock condition monitoring using wheel/rail forces

Abstract

Railway vehicles are efficient because of the low resistance in the contact zone between wheel and rail. In order to remain efficient, train operators and infrastructure owners need to keep rails, wheels and vehicles in an acceptable condition. Wheel wear affects the dynamic characteristics of vehicles and the dynamic force impact on the rail. The shape of the wheel profile affects the performance of railway vehicles in different ways. Wheel condition has historically been managed by identifying and removing wheels from service when they exceed an impact threshold. Condition monitoring of railway vehicles is mainly performed using wheel impact load detectors and truck performance detectors. These systems use either forces or stress on the rail to interpret the condition. This paper will show measurements taken at the research station outside Luleå in northern Sweden. The station measures the wheel/rail forces, both lateral and vertical, at the point of contact in a curve with a 484 m radius at speeds of up to 100 km/h. Data are analysed to show differences for various wheel positions and to determine the robustness of the system.

Reliability Analysis for Degradation of Locomotive Wheels using Parametric Bayesian Approach

“…; Stratman et al . ; Palo). A large number of related studies examining both experimental and numerical aspects have been published in the last decade (see above references).…”

“…For example, researchers from Canada (Yang & Letourneau) suggest that certain attributes, including a wheel's installed position (right or left), might influence its wear rate, but they do not provide case studies. Freitas and colleaguespoint out that ‘the degradation of a given wheel might be associated with its position on a given car’; Paloconclude that ‘different wheel positions in a bogie show significantly different force signatures’. In a recent seminar in Sweden (Kiruna, April 2012), experts from Norway illustrated their new findings that in a given topography, the wheels installed on the right and the left sides experience different force.…”

Condition monitoring approaches for the detection of railway wheel defects

“…Palo et al. 6 measured lateral wheel–rail forces by the strain gauges to assess the effect of the wheel position in a bogie on the lateral forces. This assessment was carried out in a 484 m radius curvature at a specific research station.…”

“…In addition, the wheel–rail interaction and consequently the degradation pattern varies between the right and left wheels in an axle, from the front to back axles in a bogie as well as from the first to second bogie in a wagon. 5,6 Using numerical, analytical and statistical models is therefore not applicable to in-service wheel condition assessment, and accordingly, condition monitoring can be the most convenient method for condition estimation.…”

Rail CM: Lateral contact forces estimation of locomotive wheelsets using a model-based filter for condition monitoring

“…Due to the influence of the wheel-rail interactive conditions, such as different lubrications [1] , track structure parameters and vehicle states, the dynamic responses of the vehicle may enlarge the lateral contact forces, causing severe damage to the rail [2,3] and increasing the derailment coefficients of the wheelsets. The position of the wheels in the bogie and vehicle travel direction can also affect the wheel-rail lateral contact forces, which are studied by Palo [4] using instrumented tracks for data acquisition in curves. In addition, large lateral forces can be detected when the railway vehicle is hunting on the track [5] .…”