STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF RAILWHEEL AND TRACK SIMULATION IN ANSYS
PROJECT OBJECTIVE: To simulate the rail wheel and track assembly to find the stresses, deformation and life cycle. Comparison is also made for different type of bearing loads. User defined results are also compared with the original results.
case1: The bearing load is multiplied by 5 times and the results are compared with the one with load of 100000 N .The Total Deformation, Equivalent stress and the life under both the loads are compared.
case2: A User defined result is implimented and the Total Deformation is calculated from this result and checked if it is the same as that obtained by the inbuilt result by ANSYS for a load of 100000 N.
MODEL:
The model comprises of railwheel, rail track and shaft.
MATERIAL:
Structural steel has been used in this simulation.The material properties are:
density:7850 kg/m3
young's modulus:2e+11 Pa
tensile and compressive yield strength:2.5e+08 Pa
poisson's ratio:0.3
ultimate tensile strength:4.6e+08 Pa
CONTACT SETTINGS:
The contact between rail wheel and track is regarded as FRICTIONAL with a friction coefficient of 0.3. The contact between the shaft and the wheel is termed as FRICTIONLESS. The rail track has been given a fixed joint since it has to be fixed in one place whereas the wheel has been given PLANAR joint since it has to move in one plane.The shaft is given a translational joint with a displacement of 500mm.
contacts:
joints:
loads:
A bearing load acts on the shaft which ultimately acts on the wheel. The load given to the wheel is actually the portion of the load of the carraige acting on each shaft.
MESHING:
The mesh size is kept at 50 mm and a face sizing is inserted of size 35mm to refine the size and capture the results accurately.
ANALYSIS SETTINGS:
no of steps:5
solver type:direct
lage deflection:on
forced convegence:on
auto-time stepping:on
define by:time
carry over time step:on
min time step:1e-3
max time step:0.1
RESULTS:
case1:
bearing load:1e5 N
stress:
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deformation:
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life :
bearing load:5e5 N
stress:
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deformation:
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life:
case2:
USER DEFINED RESULTS:
Deformation:
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CONCLUSION:
CASE1:
It is seen that when the bearing load has been increased to 5 times, the equivalent stress has increased to more than 100 percent and the life of the rail wheel has reduced to very less cycles from 1.5e5 to 1380.
Hence when bearing load has to be increased, changes should be made to the design of rail wheel; such as increasing the factor of safety, considering high quality material with high strength and should be designed for unlimited life. The vibrations should be made less during operation.
CASE2:
The deformation in the case of user defined results is seen to be same as the previous case.