Effect of material hardness ratio on wear and rolling contact fatigue: Development and validation of new laws

This paper extends the modelling approach towards the evaluation of wear and rolling contact fatigue, by including the effect of rail/wheel hardness ratio. We firstly perform wear and RCF tests in the laboratory with varied hardness ratios from 0.79 to 1.60. Then we formulated the new wear and RCF laws, and determined corresponding coefficients in the formulas. Proposed new wear laws are validated through a numerical example based on a prediction model. Comparison between the simulated results and in-field results shows that the results from the simulation are well consistent with those from field measurements. Sensitivity analysis provides an inspection of the effect of the hardness ratio on wear and RCF.