Characteristic test of instrumented wheelset considering contact condition

Abstract

Instrumented wheelset is widely utilized for the measurement of wheel load and lateral force between wheel and rail. Those forces are fundamental quantities in the context of running safety assessment of railway vehicles. The calibration of instrumented wheelset is implemented by applying force to a certain point on the wheel tread, while there exists a variety of contact conditions between wheel and rail in running. A testing apparatus is proposed in order to clarify characteristics of strain output of instrumented wheelset which depend on the contact condition. The overview of the testing apparatus and an example of test results is described in this paper.