Week 2 Railwheel and Track

OBJECTIVE

• Setup a case of static structural analysis of Rail Wheel and track setup
  Case 1: The bearing load is 100000 N
  Case 2: The bearing load is 5*100000 N
  
  
• Compare the result like Stress, deformation, strain, and life in both cases.
• Set up an expression for deformation and compare its result with the total deformation result

PROCEDURE

Step 1: Geometry setup

• Select Static Structural module in Ansys Workbench
• Import the geometry
• Open SpaceClaim and confirm the geometry is error-free

Step 2: Meshing

• Assign global mesh size 
• Also mesh -> Sizing -> select surface -> element size 
   
  
  
• Check mesh quality
  

Step 3: Contact

• Surface to surface frictional contact is set up between the rail wheel and track
  
   

Step 4: Joints

• Planar Joint on the wheel side surface
  
• Fixed Joint to the track
  
• Translational Joint to the Shaft
  

Step 5: Boundary conditions:

• Here the translation motion is given to the wheel. Displacement in the X direction
  
• Bearing Load in -ve Y direction. Case 1 = 1e5 N and Case 2 = 5e5 N
  
  
  

Step 6: Assign proper analysis setting for the simulation

• 

Step 7: Create output requests

• Create output requests like stress, strain, deformation, life, and contact pressure
  
• Create a user-defined expression to extract deformation.
  

Step 8: Run the simulation and evaluate the results

RESULTS

The simulation was run for two cases discussed above. The results like stress, strain, deformation, life and contact pressure were extracted in each case and are compared below.

	Case 1: Bearing Load = 100000 N	Case 2: Bearing Load = 500000 N
Stress
Strain
Deformation
Deformation - Expression
Life
Contact pressure
Result Summary

The below table provides the gist of values from the simulation

	Case 1 = 100000 N	Case 2 = 500000 N
Stress (MPa)	188.82 Mpa	781.71
Strain	1.6813e-3	5.3967e-3
Deformation (mm)	1000.3	1000.7
Deformation (UDF)	1000.3	1000.7
Life (min)	31657	451.36

CONCLUSION

Based on the simulations performed and results discussed in the previous section, the following points can be concluded

• There is a significant change in the stress developed when the bearing load is increased which is 
• Also, the life decreases almost 70 times with the increase in bearing load by 5 times which shows they are related exponentially.
• The deformation value extracted from results and expressions is the same which concludes that the expression created is true and can be used in similar cases.