Wheel-rail wear in railway systems

Wear is the most important problem of which solution is seek in the railway transportation market. Most equipments and systems are affected directly by wear. In this sense, especially the wear occurred on vehicle wheels and rail is remarkable. Due to increase in maintenance cost and effects on vehicle dynamics and safety, producers and operators have been working to solve this basic problem for long time. Wear is a long-term problem depending on rail-wheel interface relation which is non-linear, which shows the grade of complexity of the problem. Today, usage of computer aided analysis decreases the complexity but it is not sufficient to solve the problem completely. So, for now, studies on wear can not be used in practical application. However, today in the world literature, a lot of useful data is collected about this subject and solution is possible for practical application in near future. Unfortunately, no study is encountered in Turkish literature. Thus regarding increase in railway transportation importance and share in Turkey, this kind of study is necessary. In the scope of this study, first, literature is scanned and among the wear models, computer aided wear prediction is chosen, which is proper and enough for master thesis. And then, a tramline operated by Ulasim is picked and all data is gathered for this line. After that, dynamic analysis of contact are carried out for track and vehicle, depending on the data. Then results from dynamic analysis is used for calculation of wear. Finally, calculated wear is graved on wheel profile, profile evolution is investigated and comparison is made between real and simulated wear rates.