Stress concentration of transition groove induced by a press-fitted part in railway axles

The design guides of railway axles prescribe these axles to have an infinite life based on fatigue limit and to estimate the local stresses in transition fillets or grooves by using the nominal stresses derived by beam calculations. Our previous report described that the press-fitted wheel induced stress concentration on the adjacent transition. In this study, the effect of interference fitting on stress concentration of the transition was experimentally and analytically evaluated using scaled specimens. Finite element analyses of realistic wheelsets based on Japanese and European axle transition geometries were conducted to assess the interference fitting effect on full-scale axles.