Digital Solutions for Wheel/Rail Interface Monitoring
THE WHEEL RAIL SYSTEM
Railways are increasingly demanding more understanding of the interaction of wheels and rails on their networks to gain a better perspective of their operations. Areas of interest include vehicle steering performance, root causes of excessive wear, wheel/rail noise, energy usage, flange climb in curves and special track work and associated safety risks related to poor wheel rail contact.
The ability to assess these conditions relies upon accurate and timely data. KLD Lab’s automated and portable rail and wheel profile monitoring systems along with their analytical datamanagement tools facilitate the optimization of this critical interface. Railways increasingly realize that unhealthy effective conicities and rolling radius differences can lead to bogie skew, poor vehicle tracking, excessive wheel and rail wear, increased friction, energy consumption and service failures. Equally worn wheels and worn rails, especially in a curved track can increase the propensity for flange climb, a very serious interface condition.
KLD Labs has automated and portable hardware and supporting software tools needed, to provide your digital solutions to support your interface monitoring.
Equivalent Conicity
The equivalent conicity shows a graph with the conicity plotted relative to the wheelset displacement.
Rolling Radius
The rolling radius difference shows a graph of the difference rolling radius relative to the wheelset displacement.
Wheels and rails, while separate components, managing them as a system can help railways move towards greener operations by reducing energy usage. A managed wheel rail interface reduces friction which is the key factor driving wear as well as rolling resistance. The interface monitoring tools needed for that process are found in the links below.
