Computation of wheel–rail contact force for non-mapping wheel–rail profile of Translohr tram

ABSTRACT

Translohr tram has steel wheels, in V-like arrangements, as guide wheels. These operate over the guide rails in inverted-V arrangements. However, the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the guide wheels and guide rails are not always mapped one-to-one. In this study, a simplified elastic method is proposed in order to calculate the contact points between the wheels and the rails. By transforming the coordinates, the non-mapping geometric relationship between wheel and rail is converted into a mapping relationship. Considering the Translohr tram’s multi-point contact between the guide wheel and the guide rail, the elastic-contact hypothesis take into account the existence of contact patches between the bodies, and the location of the contact points is calculated using a simplified elastic method. In order to speed up the calculation, a multi-dimensional contact table is generated, enabling the use of simulation for Translohr tram running on curvatures with different radii.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-mapping
• wheel–rail contact
• elastic contact
• Translohr tram

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology under the National Science and Technology Support Program project [grant no. 2015BAG19B02].