Simulation of the thermo-mechanical behaviour of tread braked railway wheels by means of a 2D finite element model

The friction heat generated at the wheel-shoe interface during tread braking operations leads to a temperature rise of the wheel tread surface. Fast cooling as well as residual thermal stresses and strains can cause damages to the wheel surface, thus negatively affecting the vehicle dynamic behaviour and strongly reducing the wheel life. Modelling the thermo-mechanical interaction of the wheel-block pair is thus of paramount importance to improve the reliability of braking manoeuvres. The paper shows the development of a decoupled thermo-mechanical model and its implementation in ANSYS Mechanical APDL, which can compute the contact pressure at the wheel-shoe interface and the resulting wheel temperature field produced during braking operations, considering friction heating, air convection cooling and the rail chill effect.