The Distribution of Wheel-Rail Contact Stresses as a Function of Rail Geometry

As part of a theoretical and experimental study of rail fatigue, three dimensional finite element analyses are being made of the distribution of wheel-rail contact stresses in a series of Australian rail sections in order to elucidate the particular stress distributions which give rise to shelling. One aspect of this fatigue phenomenon is that individual railway operating systems have characteristic forms of shelling in their rails. In the present work the stress distribution in the series of Australian rail sections to AS1085, Part 1 - 1981 arising from typical forces on the contact ellipse is being investigated. The development of a self-adaptive three dimensional mesh generator suitable for automatic mesh optimisation is described