Numerical Investigation into the Effect of Geometric Gap Idealisation on Wheel-Rail Rolling Contact in Presence of Yaw Angle

For a fast calculation of vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics, wheel-rail contact geometric gap is usually idealised in elliptic or nonelliptic form. These two idealisations deviate from the actual one if the lateral combined curvature within the contact patch is not constant or the yaw angle of wheelset exists. The influence of these idealisations on contact solution has not yet been deeply understood, and thus the accuracy of simplified contact modelling applied to vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics remains uncertain. This paper presents a numerical methodology to treat 3D wheel-rail rolling contact, in which the asymmetric geometric gap due to yaw angle is fully taken into account. The attention of this work is placed on investigating the effect of geometric gap idealisation on wheel-rail contact force, rolling contact solution, and wear distribution. It can help with the effective wheel-rail contact modelling on the computation of both vehicle-track dynamics and wheel-rail contact mechanics