Modeling Rail Contact Temperature with a Temperature-dependent Coefficient of Friction

摘要

The rationality of friction model affects the accuracy of rail temperature calculation. A temperature-dependent coefficient of friction (COF) was adopted to develop a 3-D FE model for calculating the rail temperature. A comparison of the results between the models using the temperature-dependent and constant COF was conducted. The peak temperature is 524.73 °C at the slippage of -50% from the temperature-dependent COF, while that is 727.88°C from the constant COF. The temperature rises linearly in the model with the temperature-dependent COF, while the temperature goes up slowly gradually before reaching the peak in the model with the constant COF. The temperature gradient in the model with the constant COF are larger than that with the temperature-dependent COF.