Traction, forces, wheel climb and damage in high-speed railway operations

This paper summarizes the analysis of roughly 6 h of data from four instrumented wheelsets running at speeds of up to 240 km/h on the same Amtrak Acela trainset. Comparisons are made between power car and coach car traction values, L/V ratio, and damage (wear and RCF). The propensity for wheel climb is found to be roughly the same for power car and coach car wheels. The wear and RCF damage, as evaluated through the Tγ index, is about 50% higher for the two power car wheelsets than for the two coach car wheelsets. The peak traction coefficient on the Amtrak system is measured to have a value of about 0.65 at low speeds, declining to about 0.22 at 200 km/h. These levels are much higher than those found in the literature for high-speed trains.