Measurement of wheel-rail lateral force using shear strain of wheel web in railway vehicle (Comparison with a conventional bending based method under wheel rotating condition)

Abstract

Instrumented wheelsets are widely utilized in the railway industry for the purpose of the measurement of the wheel-rail interaction force. In the conventional instrumented wheelset, the measurement accuracy of the lateral force is reduced due to the bending moment induced by the wheel load. The authors have proposed a new configuration of the instrumented wheelset to reduce the influence of the wheel load on the measurement of the lateral force. This proposed configuration utilizes the shear strains of the wheel web as a measure of the lateral force. This paper describes the accuracy verification of the proposed configuration under the wheel rotating condition. The single-wheelset roller-rig tests are carried out and the test results show that the proposed method can reduce the influence of the wheel load even under the rotating condition.