Effect of axle misalignments on rolling resistance and wheel wear

Conference · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1985

OSTI ID:5576856

Leary, J F; Wilson, N G

High energy costs impacting the railroad industry and the use of rail lubrication to lower energy consumption have led to investigation of axle misalignment as a cause of train resistance and wear. This paper brings together the results of field and laboratory misalignment tests designed to measure the effects of axle misalignment on roller resistance and wheel wear of standard trucks run on curved and tangent track. These tests employed the Transportation Test Center's Roll Dynamics Unit for the lab tests, an instrumented coupler for field testing, and a modified version of the AAR Curving Model to validate the RDU results and correlate them to field data. All testing was conducted at the Transportation Test Center near Pueblo, Colorado, under the sponsorship of the Association of American Railroads (RDU Test) and the Federal Railroad Administration (Track Test). During testing, deliberate misalignments were introduced in test wheelsets, and measurements were taken in field and laboratory settings. The train resistance and wheel wear data correlated well with the curving model, showing that reasonably accurate results are achievable by modeling within a common range of known conditions. The undesirable effects of axle misalignment on train resistance and wear were confirmed.

• OSTI ID: 5576856
• Report Number(s): CONF-851125-
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
320202* -- Energy Conservation
Consumption
& Utilization-- Transportation-- Railway
ABSTRACTS
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
COLORADO
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DOCUMENT TYPES
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
FEDERAL REGION VIII
FRICTION
LEADING ABSTRACT
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MEETINGS
NORTH AMERICA
PERFORMANCE TESTING
ROAD TESTS
ROLLING FRICTION
TEST FACILITIES
TESTING
TRAINS
TRUCKS
USA
VEHICLES
WEAR
WHEELS