Development of three-dimensional simulation model of rolling operation in railway wheel manufacturing process

Railway wheel manufacturing is a unique form of the hot forming process and consists of forging, rolling, and dishing operations. With the ever-improving technology, railway coaches and locomotives use wheels of various designs to cater to its growing need for speed and safety. Thus, it becomes imperative for a manufacturer of railway wheels to develop the capability of manufacturing railway wheels of a wide variety of designs to remain relevant in a competitive market. However, for developing any new wheel, the manufacturer needs to design new dies and rolls according to the new wheel design. Using a simulation model to predict possible outputs of railway wheel forming is essential for the design phase. Wheel rolling is one of the most complicated operations in railway wheel forming process. Railway wheel rolling is a particular type of shape rolling where a forged railway wheel is worked upon simultaneously by five rolls to give a specific shape. The present work attempts to develop a simulation model of the wheel rolling process. It proposes a mathematical model for determining roll movement parameters for producing wheels of any given dimension. The simulated results were compared with a rolled wheel from an industrial setup for a railway wheel manufacturing unit and found to be in good agreement based on the prediction of output geometry and load requirement. Thus, the developed simulation model based on FEM allows designers and shop managers to predict rolling outputs quickly with minimum cost implications. This model will help the designer eliminate costly trial productions required for stabilizing die and roll designs during the development of new railway wheels. Further, the simulation model can be beneficial for optimizing production parameters related to wheel rolling and understanding the effects of possible process deviations during production, thereby reducing rejections, energy consumption and improving the shop’s overall productivity. The simulation was done using commercial DEFORM 3D finite element code.