Fatigue crack initiation life prediction of railroad wheels

A new multiaxial high-cycle fatigue initiation life prediction model for railroad wheels is proposed in this paper. A general fatigue damage analysis methodology for complex mechanical components is developed and applied to the wheel/rail rolling contact fatigue problem. A 3-D elasto-plastic finite element model is used for stress analysis. A submodeling technique is used to achieve both computational efficiency and accuracy. Then the fatigue damage in the wheel is evaluated numerically using the stress history during one revolution of the wheel rotation. The effects of wheel diameter, vertical loading, material hardness, and material fatigue properties on fatigue crack initiation life are investigated using the proposed model.