Comparison of Non-elliptic Contact Models : Towards Fast and Accurate Modelling of Wheel-Rail Contact

The demand to investigate and predict the surface deterioration phenomenain the wheel-rail interface necessitates fast and accurate contact modelling.During the past twenty years, there have been attempts to determine more realisticcontact patch and stress distributions using fast non-iterative methods.The main aim of the present work is to compare some of these state-of-theart,non-elliptic contact models available in the literature. This is consideredas the first step in introducing a fast and accurate non-elliptic contact modelthat can be used on-line with vehicle dynamics analysis. Three contact models,namely STRIPES, Kik-Piotrowski and Linder methods are implementedand compared in terms of contact patch prediction, as well as contact pressureand traction distributions. The paper also discusses the gaps to be filledin terms of contact model evaluation and the results indicate the need forbetter contact pressure and patch estimation in certain contact cases.QC 20120131Modelling contact in the wheel-rail interfac