Multi-Scale Fatigue Damage Life Assessment of a Railway Wheel Using a Critical-Plane Model

Abstract

A 3D finite element model is constructed in ABAQUS® to simulate the stress/strain fields that take place under the rolling-contact of railway wheels on rails. This FE model constitutes a faithful replica of a railway wheel that is rolled on a rail segment using a hard-contact over-closure relationship and an elastoplastic material model with isotropic and kinematic hardening. This material model predicts the wheel’s stabilized steady-state structural response using a multiaxial critical-plane fatigue model that accounts for the effect of residual stresses.

The steady-state stress/strain response of the wheel is post-processed using algorithms written in MatLab® to obtain state-of-the-art analytical predictions of subsurface micro-crack initiation within the railway wheel. Finally, based on the results obtained from the crack initiation study, a pre-cracked multiscale model is constructed to investigate the influence of a subsurface crack on the wheel’s stress fields.