An investigation into the mechanism of high-order polygonal wear of metro train wheels and its mitigation measures

Abstract

High-order polygonal wear wheels have been detected on metro express train operating on one metro line in China, which cause fatigue failures of steel coil springs in the primary suspension. A series of tests and theory analysis were conducted to figure out the mechanism of wheel high-order polygonal wear. The wheel out-of-roundness (OOR) measurement results show that the wheels exhibit polygonal wear with 12–14 harmonics, which are very different from other metro train wheels reported in the literature. The investigation results indicate that the first bending vibration of the wheelset is the root cause of wheel high-order polygonal wear. Rail corrugation with a wavelength of 200 mm in the 1/3-octave band on sharply curved tracks is the main excitation source of the first bending vibration of the wheelset. The formation process and key influencing factors of wheel high-order polygonal wear are analysed in detail. Three measures are suggested to mitigate the formation of wheel high-order polygonal wear.

KEYWORDS:

• Metro train
• wheel wear
• high-order polygonal wear
• rail corrugation
• vehicle vibration

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank colleagues and graduate students for their efforts in the experiment, to thank CRRC and metro company for the cooperation and great help during the test.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Gongquan Tao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1836-2363

Chenxi Xie http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1988-565X

Zefeng Wen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8883-9462

Additional information

Funding

The present work is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2017YFB1201100], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 51875484], the Science and Technology Program of Sichuan Province of China [grant number 2019YFH0053], the Regional Innovation Cooperation Project of Sichuan Province of China [grant number 2020YFQ0024] and the Scientific Research Foundation of the State Key Laboratory of Traction Power of Southwest Jiaotong University [grant number 2020TPL-T03].