Wear simulation for the centre plate arrangement of a freight car

Abstract

The bodies of many railway freight cars in many countries of the world are coupled to the running gear by means of a body centre plate that makes a friction pair with a centre bowl. During motion, the bogie is rotated and moved with respect to the car body. This leads to wear on the contact surfaces. Lubrication is inexpedient in this case because the friction forces damp the vibrations (so-called bogie hunting) during motion. Usually, centre plates exhibit noticeable wear after two years of operation. Reducing wear requires knowing details of the wear process which, in turn, requires computer simulation of freight car motion for an operation period of 10–15 years. The purpose of this paper is to develop a universal method for wear simulation of friction pairs that could be used, in particular, for the centre plate of a freight car.

Keywords:

• contact problem
• wear
• multibody dynamics
• finite element method
• freight train
• railway systems

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Pavel Egorov and Ekaterina Fedyaeva for their valuable contribution in obtaining results of the research. This research was supported by the 2015 KU Brain Pool of Konkuk University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Hyun-Ik Yang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1160-0349