Experimental Study on Damage of the Rail/wheel Sliding Contact Surface in Heavy-haul Railway

Heavy-haul railway plays very important roles in transportation of bulk goods because of their special advantages. Heavy-haul trains can cause obvious damage to the rail/wheel contact surface when starting or braking. In this paper, a new rail/wheel friction testing machine is designed and built, and the damage characteristics of the contact surface during rail/wheel sliding contact are studied. The experimental results show in the process of sliding contact, a large amount of grooves can be seen on the wheel surface and are becoming more obvious with the increase of loads and speeds. On the rail surface, there are various types of damages, including adhesion, spalling, grooves, corrosion, etc., which are closely related to cracks. The results also indicate the wheel wear amount gradually increases with the growth of loads and speeds. However, the rail wear amount varies greatly, which is related to the adhesion of wear particles.