Study of the Falling Friction Effect on Rolling Contact Parameters

The existence of a wheel-rail friction coefficient that depends on the slip velocity has been associated in the literature with important railway problems like the curving squeal and certain corrugation problems in rails. Rolling contact models that take into account this effect were carried out through the so-called Exact Theories adopting an exact elastic model of the solids in contact, and Simplified Theories which assume simplified elastic models such as Winkler. The former ones, based on Kalker's Variational Theory, give rise to numerical problems; the latter ones need to adopt hypotheses that significantly deviate from actual conditions, leading to unrealistic solutions of the contact problem. In this paper, a methodology based on Kalker's Variational Theory is presented, in which a local slip velocity-dependent friction law is considered. A formulation to get steady-state conditions of rolling contact by means of regularisation of the Coulomb's law is proposed. The model allows establishing relationships in order to estimate the global properties (creepage velocities vs. total longitudinal forces) through local properties (local slip velocity vs. coefficient of friction) or vice versa. The proposed model shows a good agreement with experimental tests while solving the numerical problems previously mentioned.