Abstract—The aim of this analysis was to estimate the fatigue life of the rail wheels of LHB coaches used in luxury trains of Indian Railways. This paper first discusses the rolling contact fatigue phenomenon and mathematical models for different kind of fatigue failure modes on the basis of which different fatigue parameters are evaluated. The work carried out includes modeling of LHB coach in a multi-body dynamic solver package GENSYS and also designing of track considering irregularities according to local terrains. Time simulation was carried out to get the dynamic outputs of forces and different fatigue parameters. Fatigue life was calculated in terms of run distance of the rolling stock both for Indian and European track profiles and results were compared.

Index Terms—Rolling contact fatigue, Railway wheels, Fatigue index, Damage estimation

Cite:Goutam Nayak and Piyush Verma, "Estimation of Rolling Contact Fatigue in Railway Vehicles," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Special Issue, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 67-72, January 2014.