Thermal Stress Analysis of a Railway Wheel in Sliding-Rolling Motion

Our investigations aimed to model the thermal stress development between wheel and rail, caused by heat generation during braking, by coupled transient thermal and elastic-plastic FE simulations. Stresses are generated due to thermal expansion caused by local temperature rise and changes in temperature in case of one revolution of the wheel. Our investigations resulted in the fact that thermal expansion caused by heat generation and heat conduction induced considerable local stresses along the thread of the wheel ∼0.1–0.5 mm underneath the surface.