Study on wheel-rail contact characteristic on swing nose crossing

Abstract

Swing nose crossing have been installed mainly on high-speed railway lines to improve riding comfort and speed up the passage through turnouts, but rolling contact fatigue damage have been observed on some of these crossings. Further improvement of maintenance efficiency and an increase in service life can be expected by clarifying the causes of the occurrence. In this study, a model of swing nose crossing and high-speed railway vehicle was constructed and simulated to elucidate the causes of rolling contact fatigue damage. The predicted wheel-rail contact conditions of a railway vehicle passing through swing nose crossing obtained from the simulation were then compared with the real phenomena. The results confirmed that the events were similar to those in the simulation.