Experiment and simulation of metal flow in multi-stage forming process of railway wheel

Abstract

To investigate the metal flow during the railway wheel forming process, experiments and finite element method (FEM) simulation were carried out. An axisymmetric modeling for the wheel rolling process was proposed to predict the metal flow in radial direction, by which the whole multi-stage forming process could be simulated in axisymmetric and integral way. The result shows that the axisymmetric simulation method was an effective method to explore the metal flow in radial direction and to analyze the relationships of tools motion during the wheel rolling. The detail information about metal flow in railway wheel forming process was obtained. The metal in the wheel web was from the area near the half radius of the original billet; the chill zone of the billet became an envelope of the rim and part of the web with a maximum thickness of about 6 mm below the tread. At the wheel rolling stage, the metal in the rim flowed towards the web; the metal near the surfaces of the conjunction region between the web and rim suffered severe shear deformation.