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Experimental Setup of an Innovative Multi-Axle Roller Rig for the Investigation of the Adhesion Recovery Phenomenon

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Abstract

Proper values of the adhesion coefficient are the key to guarantee good operations of railway transportation systems in terms of safety, performances and punctuality during both braking and traction manoeuvres. Adhesion can drop to very low values due to contaminants lying on the track. However, the leading wheelsets have a cleaning effect on the rail, so that adhesion recovery can be observed on the following axles. A good knowledge of adhesion and adhesion recovery phenomenon is thus fundamental to optimize the dynamic behaviour of railway vehicles and to develop new algorithms for wheel slide protection (WSP) and antiskid systems. Several laboratory facilities are used to investigate adhesion, due to the high costs of on-track tests with full vehicles. Anyway, these devices do not allow a good simulation of the vehicle dynamics and of the real contact conditions. To overcome these issues, roller rigs usually represent a good compromise in terms of costs, safety, repeatability of the tests and simulation of the real contact conditions and vehicle dynamics. However, typical roller rigs consist of one or more wheelsets rolling over separate pair of rollers. An evolution of roller rigs, consisting of multiple wheelsets acting on the same contaminated surfaces, is thus needed to study the adhesion recovery phenomenon more properly. The paper concerns the experimental setup of an innovative 1:5 scaled multi-axle roller rig developed at Politecnico di Torino. The rig is intended to allow researchers to obtain a deep understanding of the mutual interaction of different following wheelsets running on a contaminated track.

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Abbreviations

f :

Adhesion coefficient

F b :

Braking force

F s :

Suspension load

F x :

Tangential load at the wheel-roller interface

g :

Gravity acceleration

I R,yy :

Polar inertia of the rollers

I w,yy :

Polar inertia of the wheelset

m :

Mass of the wheelset

N :

Normal load at the wheel/roller interface

p F\B :

F\b pressure at the outlet of the valves

p SET :

Set pressure at the outlet of the valves

R PAD :

Braking effective radius

R R :

Roller radius

R w :

Wheel radius

T M :

Torque produced by the motor

T R,0 :

Initial resistant torque

T R,b :

Resistant torque due to braking effort

V IN :

Set voltage

V OUT :

FeedBack voltage

α :

Angle of inclination of the wheelse

ξ :

Creep

τ :

Transmission ratio (ration between roller and wheel radius)

ω R :

Angular speed of the rollers

ω w :

Angular speed of the wheels

\( {\dot{\omega}}_R \) :

Angular acceleration of the rollers

\( {\dot{\omega}}_w \) :

Angular acceleration of the wheelset

b :

Braking

i :

Wheelset number (i = 1 ÷ 4)

j :

Wheel number (j = 1,2)

R :

Roller

s :

Suspension

w :

Wheelset

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Torino, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, C.so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129, Torino, Italy

    N. Bosso, A. Gugliotta, M. Magelli & N. Zampieri

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  1. N. Bosso
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  2. A. Gugliotta
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  3. M. Magelli
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  4. N. Zampieri
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Correspondence to N. Zampieri.

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Bosso, N., Gugliotta, A., Magelli, M. et al. Experimental Setup of an Innovative Multi-Axle Roller Rig for the Investigation of the Adhesion Recovery Phenomenon. Exp Tech 43, 695–706 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40799-019-00327-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40799-019-00327-x

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