On dynamic effects of wheel–rail interaction in the case of Polygonalisation

• The paper is devoted to study the rolling motion of a polygonalised railway wheel on the rail.
• For uniform guiding motion, the trajectory of the contact point and vertical accelerations are evaluated first in the rigid case, then in the case of elastic and visco-elastic contact.
• The results are important in railway dynamics.

Following earlier work of the authors [1], we study here the influence of surface imperfections of a certain type on the vertical loading, in particular in the form of fluctuations in the progressive speed of a moving force. The problem is partly associated with another line of work, where we analyzed configurations of regions in the parameter space with qualitatively different solutions for supported beams under moving loads [2]. In this paper, we study the rolling motion of a polygonalised railway wheel on the rail. For uniform guiding motion, the trajectory of the contact point and vertical accelerations are evaluated first in the rigid case, then in the case of elastic and visco-elastic contact. It will be pointed out that a wavy form of the wheel changes considerably the longitudinal velocity of contact points, even for constant speed of the wheel center which can be are as on for instability.