A Model for the Assessment of Wheel–Rail Contact in the Presence of Solid Contaminants

An analytical model for the assessment of a contact in the presence of a solid contaminant is presented, mainly aimed at studying the damage to railway wheels and rails operating in third-bodycontaminated environments. The model, developed under 2D plane strain idealization, includes multiple evenly spaced rigid cylindrical contaminant bodies entrapped between two elastic cylinders. It allows a very fast calculation of the pressure distribution on the surfaces in contact and it can be used for evaluating the stress field in the subsurface region, at both the small scale of the contact between the main body and the contaminant body and the full scale of the contact between the two main bodies. The model was validated by comparison with finite element (FE) analyses, showing its accuracy. Some examples of application showed the model’s ability to predict the limit of the influence of the solid contaminant bodies and the depth where cyclic plasticity phenomena occur in wheel–rail contacts