Integrated Computational Materials, Process and Product Engineering – IC-MPPE 2022

Railway turnouts feature discontinuities in wheel-rail contact geometry and track stiffness. These discontinuities results in large dynamic contact forces causing degradation of the rail surfaces and track irregularities over time.
Currently, researchers focus mostly on one damage mechanism at the time, however, the interplay and interconnection between those mechanisms have not yet been addressed.
The aim of the current work is therefore to develop and demonstrate a novel methodology based on the interconnected submodules to make such holistic predictions for accumulated track damage in turnouts and account for the interplay and interaction between damage patterns such as the development of track irregularities due to ballast and subsoil settlement, and rail profile changes due to plastic deformation and wear.
We found that at the beginning of the turnout service life the running surface of the rails in these areas change significantly due to plastic deformation, which in turn increases the dynamic impact forces from passing vehicles.
It is shown that the developed WSM methodology can predict accumulated track damage accounting for the coupling between different damage modes such as track settlement, rail profiles plastic deformation and wear. It can therefore be used for holistic assessment of turnouts e.g., in turnout design optimisation and material selection studies.