The polygonal wear of train wheels occurs commonly in rail transport and increases the wheel–rail interaction force dramatically and has a bad effect on the safety and comfort of the train. The mechanism of polygonal wear needs to be studied. The characteristics of test data measured from 47,000 sets of polygonal wheels of high-speed trains were analysed statistically. The analysis shows that, in the entire use life cycle of the wheels, the order (wavelength) and development speed of polygonal wear are different; they correspond to different wheel diameters because of wear and re-profiling. A prediction model, which considered the flexibility of the wheelset for the polygonal wear of the wheels of high-speed trains, was developed to explain this phenomenon. This theoretical model analyses the initiation, development, and characteristics of polygonal wear. The analysis includes the effect of the high-frequency flexible deformation of the wheelset, train operation speed, and wheel diameter variation. This study suggests that, if the wheel perimeter is nearly an integral multiple of the wavelength of severe periodic wear along the wheel circumference, the polygonal wear on the wheel can develop quickly. Furthermore, the wavelength of the periodic wear of the wheel relies on the operation speed of the train and wheelset resonant frequency. Therefore, the initiation and development of polygonal wear on wheels depends on the operation speed, wheel diameter, and the resonant frequencies of the wheelset. This conclusion can be applied to research concerning measures associated with the suppression of polygonal wear development.

Cement asphalt mortar (CAM) softening is a common phenomenon that results from ageing and rain soaking when a high-speed railway is in service. CAM softeni

This paper develops a numerical model for wheel-rail noise analysis in the time-domain. This model for wheel-rail noise is based on vehicle-track coupling

Concrete box girder bridges occupy over 80% of the total mileage of the Chinese high-speed railway. The box girder structure has many natural modes of low frequencies, which can be excited by a train passing at high-speed, generating low-frequency bridge noise. This paper is concerned with the prediction of such bridge noise and reports a prediction model. The model, as other existing models of the same nature, also incorporates two parts, one dealing with vehicle–track-viaduct dynamics and the other dealing with sound radiation from the girders, but takes into account more features related to high-speed. In this model, vehicle–track-viaduct dynamics is dealt with in the frequency-domain based on the theory of infinitely long periodic structure and the Fourier-series method, predicting vibration frequency spectra for each and every box girder. The predicted vibration frequency spectra of all the box girders are expressed as a sum of propagating waves at different wavenumbers, and sound radiation from each propagating wave is evaluated using the 2.5D acoustic boundary element method. This approach to sound radiation enables contributions from all the box girders to be included at a reasonable computational cost. This paper continues with a comparison in bridge vibration and noise between prediction and measurement for a typical site. And finally, based on the parameters of that site, characteristics of noise radiation from the concrete box girders are studied using the prediction model.

A three-dimensional wheel–rail rolling contact model (3D WRRCM) developed using the explicit finite element method (FEM) can be used to analyze the dynamic performances of wheelsets and tracks while considering the wheelset rotation and translation, as well as the real wheel–rail contact mechanism. When using the FEM with static initialisation (traditional model), the first step is to calculate the static wheel–rail displacement, strain, and stress when applying axle loading on the wheel and neglecting the wheelset rotation and translation. Then, using these results as the initial conditions, the dynamic wheel–rail displacement, strain, and stress are calculated while considering the wheelset rotation and translation by adopting the explicit dynamic solution method. However, obtaining a solution using this traditional method is time consuming, and the solution can be divergent because of the impulse produced by the suddenly increasing wheelset rotation when proceeding from the initial condition to the dynamic. The optimised method developed in this study can solve this problem. A comparison of the results from the traditional and optimised methods reveals that in the optimised method, the softer initial impulse effectively shortens the track length needed for the calculation and improves the solution efficiency.