Freight locomotive wheel wear simulation in train operational environment

Locomotive wheel wear simulations that consider both train dynamics and detailed traction control systems have not been reported. This paper developed a parallel co-simulation method to connect an in-house Longitudinal Train Dynamics (LTD) simulator and a commercial software package named GENSYS. An advanced LTD model, a traction control system model and a wheel-rail contact model were then incorporated into the simulation. Three wear calculation models, T-gamma model, USFD model and Archard model, were implemented. A train with the configuration of 1 locomotive + 54 wagons + 1 locomotive + 54 wagons was simulated. Wear calculation results show that the wear numbers that were calculated using the T-gamma wear model were similar between the leading and remote locomotives. However, wear rates that were calculated using the USFD wear model and wear volumes that were calculated using the Archard model have evident differences between the leading and remote locomotives. Maximum differences in these results were about 12 and 18% respectively.