AlSi7Mg0.6 aluminum alloy is widely adopted in many industrial fields due to its favorable mechanical properties and lightweight merits. In the catenary system of high-speed railways, AlSi7Mg0.6 aluminum alloy is adopted as the substrate of the positioning hook and positioning support, which exhibit abnormal wear in some railways. Thus, it is very important to reveal the underlying wear characteristics and discover the key factors involved. In this study, the influences of displacement (0.5 mm, 1.5 mm, and 3.0 mm) and applied load (20 N, 50 N, 100 N, and 200 N) on the wear performance of AlSi7Mg0.6 aluminum alloy are investigated experimentally and numerically. Wear experiments are time-consuming and costly, but the finite element method (FEM) can effectively solve this problem. A UMESHMOTION user-defined subroutine integrated with an ABAQUS Arbitrary Lagrangian–Eulerian (ALE) adaptive mesh technique was developed to simulate the wear evolution process of the aluminum alloy under varying displacements and applied loads. The results indicate that the wear evolution process of AlSi7Mg0.6 aluminum alloy can be effectively simulated using the UMESHMOTION subroutine. The maximum wear depth (MWD) from the FEM deviates from the experimental results by no more than 10%, and the deviation is smaller than the experimental values. The largest deviation occurs when the displacement is 3.0 mm and the applied load is 100 N, where the discrepancy reaches 7.53%. The wear volume (WV) obtained from the FEM shows a deviation of less than 20% compared to experimental results. For the case with a displacement of 0.5 mm, the numerical results underestimate the wear volume, while for the case with displacements of 1.5 mm and 3.0 mm, the numerical results overestimate the wear volume. The largest deviation in this case occurs for the case with a displacement of 3.0 mm and applied loading of 100 N, with a discrepancy of 16.33%.

In high-speed train traction power supply systems, compensation ropes serve as critical transmission components to ensure system stability. These ropes are specially designed as right-hand alternating lay wire ropes. During tension compensation of the contact wire, the compensation rope undergoes repeated bending around the ratchet device, making it susceptible to fatigue fracture. This study conducted bending fatigue tests on compensation ropes with complete structural configurations in accordance with GB/T 12347-2008. The stress distribution and deformation evolution induced by bending were simulated using the finite element method, enabling fatigue life prediction under cyclic bending conditions. Given the significant convergence difficulties encountered in large-deformation bending simulations of the full structural model, this study innovatively adopts Love’s elastic thin-rod theory as an alternative approach, which avoids the computational prohibitions of full-scale helical modeling while preserving critical bending stiffness characteristics. The results demonstrate that the equivalent elastic modulus derived from Love’s elastic thin-rod theory closely matches the modulus obtained through stress–strain curve fitting from strand tensile tests. Furthermore, under identical axial tensile loads, the equivalent diameter model and the full-structure finite element model exhibit nearly identical end elongations. The predicted bending fatigue life using the equivalent diameter model agrees well with experimental results, and the fatigue fracture mechanisms are further revealed through microscopic morphology analysis, collectively confirming that the proposed equivalent modeling strategy provides an efficient and reliable solution for fatigue life prediction of complex wire rope structures under coupled tension–bending conditions.