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Approach for Conformal Contact Detection for Wheel-Rail Interaction

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Part of the book series: Mechanisms and Machine Science ((Mechan. Machine Science,volume 59))

Abstract

No matter which methodology is used for the computational modelling and analysis, the wheel-rail interaction plays a fundamental role on the dynamic response of railway vehicles. For that, fast and accurate evaluation of the contact interaction is demanded. Bearing that in mind, realistic contact conditions must be taken into account to replicate as detailed as possible this interaction, namely in what concerns with the consideration of actual wheel and rail profiles. Often, parametric surfaces are used to describe their geometry; however, it is shown that the search for potential contact points may become troublesome when the contacting surfaces are conformal. In this work, a methodology to deal with contact detection between general wheel and rail profiles with conformal contact scenarios is presented. This method consists of the division of the wheel into strips together with a search approach to detect the contact between each strip and the rail surface. The static interaction between UIC54 rail and a wheel profiles is used as case study to demonstrate the effectiveness of the methodology described here. The results obtained show that the proposed approach is able to properly describe the contact zone and calculate the penetration along the patch.

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Acknowledgments

The first and second authors are supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under grant PD/BD/114154/2016, MIT Portugal Program, and SFRH/BD/96695/2013, respectively. This work has been supported by the FCT with the reference project UID/EEA/04436/2013, by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) with the reference project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006941.

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Correspondence to Filipe Marques .

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Marques, F., Magalhães, H., Ambrósio, J., Flores, P. (2019). Approach for Conformal Contact Detection for Wheel-Rail Interaction. In: Corves, B., Wenger, P., Hüsing, M. (eds) EuCoMeS 2018 . EuCoMeS 2018. Mechanisms and Machine Science, vol 59. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98020-1_9

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