Railway wheels and axles belong to the most critical components in railway vehicles. The service conditions of railway vehicles became more severe in recent years due to the increase of speed. Therefore, a more precise evaluation of railway wheel life and safety has been requested. Wheel/rail contact fatigue and thermal cracks due to braking are two major mechanisms of the railway wheel failure. One of the main sources of the contact zone failure is the residual stress. The residual stress on wheel is formed during the manufacturing process which includes a heat treatment, and then, is changed in the process of braking which results in wheel/rail contact stress and thermal stress. In this paper, an evaluation procedure for the contact fatigue life of railway wheel including residual stress is proposed. Also, the cyclic stress history for fatigue analysis is simulated by applying finite element analysis for the moving contact load. As a result, a fatigue life estimation methodology is proposed for railway wheels which includes the effects of residual stresses due to heat treatment, braking and repeated contact load, respectively.
Estimation of Contact Fatigue Initiation Lifetime of an Urban Railway Wheel