Abstract
Freight trains are one of the primary sources of revenue for Indian Railways. Indian Railways has reported hundreds of wheelset failures due to wheel gauge widening and condemning during the last several years. This work addresses an effective methodology to estimate the temperature and wheel gauge evolution during braking of the wagon wheels by developing a two-dimensional axisymmetric finite element model (FEM) for a wheel sent to service without performing the heat treatment process by using a coupled temperature-displacement analysis in ABAQUS. Simulations were carried out by assuming different scenarios of lateral shifting of the brake block towards the wheel flange. Higher heat input in the wheel during braking because of non-uniformity can cause wheel gauge condemning failures when the brake blocks are shifted towards the flange side during the braking.
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