Contact vibrations of a wheel on a rail

• Published in: Journal of sound and vibration 1973-01, Vol.28 (2), p.277-293
• Main Author: Nayak, P. Ranganath
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0022-460X; 1095-8568
• DOI: 10.1016/S0022-460X(73)80107-5

When a wheel rolls on a rail with a randomly wavy surface, the random waviness gives rise to a displacement input to the wheel and rail with a significant high-frequency ( f>100 Hz) spectral content. This displacement input excites the contact resonance of the system, wherein the mass of the wheel and an “equivalent mass” of the rail vibrate on the nonlinear contact spring. The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical model for these high-frequency contact vibrations. The wheel is assumed to undergo only rigid-body motions, apart from the localized elastic deformation near the contact region. The rail is modeled as an infinite beam on a continuous, point-reacting foundation. With the rail roughness being assumed to be a locally stationary, Gaussian random process, a complete solution is presented to the linearized problem. Three phenomena of interest are investigated in detail: plastic deformations, loss of contact, and the formation of corrugations on the rail. The effects of various wheel and rail parameters on these phenomena are explored.