A new approach for solving three-dimensional elasto-plastic wheel-rail normal contact problems

A new approach for solving three-dimensional elasto-plastic wheel-rail normal contact problems is presented, which is used to obtain the normal contact pressure distribution in the wheel-rail contact patch and its interior. First, the potential contact region dispersed by rectangular blocks is given. Then, the normal contact pressure in each block is iterated using the conjugate gradient algorithm, and the contact patch and normal contact pressure distribution under elastic conditions are obtained. After that, based on the proposed normal contact pressure correction equation and grid size correction equation, the size and normal contact pressure of each block are corrected, and so the normal contact pressure considering plastic deformation is obtained. Finally, the wheel-rail normal contact pressure under different lateral displacements and normal forces is calculated using the finite element method, and the accuracy of the proposed method is verified. Results show that the computational efficiency of the proposed approach is much higher than that of the conventional finite element method, which can provide new inspiration for railway dynamics computation.