Modeling temperature evolution of wheel flat during formation

Predicting temperature evolution of sliding bodies plays a key role in many industrial designs. Temperature-dependent material properties, microstructure evolution of material while heating and quenching, and residual stress comprise these factors’ importance. Despite existing theoretical, numerical, and experimental methods for predicting surface temperature of sliding bodies, there are some restrictions relating to each one. This paper aims to present a strategy and numerical method for finding the temperature evolution of sliding bodies with arbitrary geometry of the contact patch. Preserving generality, temperature evolution of sliding railway flat wheels is the main problem of this study. A finite element model (FEM) is developed with ANSYS APDL software (Canonsburg, PA, USA). The model is validated with existing analytical formulas in steady state and transient cases and a good agreement is achieved. Six real cases from full-scale field tests are considered and a comparison is made between the results. As an application of the method, the obtained time-history of surface temperature is applied to a 3D FE model of a flat wheel as a boundary condition.