Stress gradient effects in surface initiated rolling contact fatigue of rails and wheels.pdfVIP

Wear 366-367 (2016) 188–193 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Wear journal homepage: /locate/wear Stress gradient effects in surface initiated rolling contact fatigue of rails and wheels Anders Ekberg a,n, Elena Kabo a,c, Roger Lundén a, Motohide Matsui b a CHARMEC, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96 Gothenburg, Sweden b Railway Technical Research Institute, 2-8-38 Hikari Kokubunji, Tokyo 185-8540, Japan c Qamcom RT, Falkenbergsgatan 3, SE-412 85 Gothenburg, Sweden article info Article history: Received 16 October 2015 Received in revised form 23 April 2016 Accepted 25 April 2016 Available online 30 April 2016 Keywords: Rolling contact fatigue Stress gradient effect Notch sensitivity factor Equivalent stress criterion abstract The paper investigates gradient effects, which relate to how highly stressed regions should be dealt with in fatigue design analyses. In particular stress gradients in rolling contact are investigated with a focus on differences in response between full and partial slip conditions. To this end the multiaxial state of stress beneath a wheel–rail contact featuring full or partial slip is quanti?ed using a multiaxial equivalent stress criterion. A comparative study shows that the signi?cant differences in peak interfacial shear stress magnitudes between full and partial slip conditions are signi?cantly reduced when translated to equivalent stress magnitudes. An innovative procedure to quantify the gradient effects by comparing the multiaxial contact stress ?eld to uniaxial conditions is developed and employed. For the studied cases stress gradients beneath the frictional contact were found to be similar to stress gradients outside a uniaxially loaded large plate featuring a small hole with a radius in the order of 0.5–0.7 mm. The study concludes that the use of local magnitudes of interfacial shear stress in the analysis of surface initiated rolling contact fatigue under partial slip conditions is conservative. The analysis fram