Design of railway wheel profile taking into account rolling contact fatigue and wear

The rolling contact fatigue (RCF) problems such as head checks (HC) in moderate and large radius curves have high priority of the Dutch railways (NS). The paper proposes a procedure for design of a wheel profile which improves wheel/rail interaction by reducing wear while taking into account rolling contact fatigue. The procedure uses an optimality criterion based on a rolling radii difference (RRD) function. The criterion accounts for stability of a wheelset, minimum wear and contact stresses of wheels and rails as well as safety requirements. Using the proposed procedure a new wheel profile has been obtained and numerically tested using ADAMS/Rail computer package. The results of the optimisation are presented and discussed.