Non-Hertzian conformal contact at wheel/rail interface

The Transportation Technology Center conducted an investigation to study non-Hertzian conformal contact, roller conformal contact, and Hertzian counterformal contact at the wheel/rail interface. The computational results show that a significant error (up to 72 percent) in both stress distribution and contact area may be produced by using the approximate Hertzian conformal solution to solve non-Hertzian conformal contact, which is the current practice in most vehicle dynamic simulation models. An even greater error (up to 400 percent) may be produced by using the Hertzian counterformal solution to solve non-Hertzian conformal contact. The study also shows that, in elastic contact, the separation function of two contact bodies plays a dominant role in the determination of contact stresses and area. It is not proper to present the separation function by a quadratic function in non-Hertzian conformal contacts.<>