An experimental measurement and numerical calculation method on friction temperature rise of sliding contact pairs - taking rail/wheel contact as an example

The analysis of rail/wheel sliding friction heat is a very important research field. The numerical simulation is often adopted to calculate the friction heat, and experimental method is relatively few. In this paper, an experimental machine is designed to simulate the rail/wheel sliding contact. At the same time, a rail/wheel contact wear model and a friction heat transfer model are established. The characteristics of temperature on rail/wheel sliding contact are analyzed by experimental test and numerical calculation. The research results show that the temperature rise of wheel and rail is quick in the initial sliding contact stage, then gradually slows down. The temperature of wheel is higher than that of rail at the same depth from the contact surface. In the initial sliding stage, the wheel temperature rises faster than the rail temperature, which is related to the size of contact surface and the concentration degree of friction heat. Moreover, the results of this paper show that the temperature values of the rail/wheel obtained through experimental test and numerical calculation are in good agreement. The experimental and numerical calculation methods used in this article can be adopted to analyze the contact problems of other sliding friction pairs.