London Underground is facing the challenge of increasing timetables against spending cuts across renewals and maintenance in all assets. In order to meet this challenge, it is reviewing all maintenance practices to make sure that they are appropriate for the current asset conditions. Management of the wheel–rail interface is critical to maximising the life of wheels and rails through preventative maintenance regimes that ensure all activities offer value for money and safe operation. Detailed monitoring of the asset condition using novel non-destructive techniques has allowed the identification of the problems which currently occur at the wheel–rail interface on the London Underground network. These problems are discussed in this paper along with some of the solutions proposed to manage them. Site observations from a range of rail rolling contact fatigue monitoring sites have also been compared to the outputs from vehicle dynamic simulations. These outputs were post-processed using a circle plotting technique, which illustrates the location, direction and severity of the forces, and the Whole Life Rail Model to predict the susceptibility to rail damage for two rail steel grades. The outputs from these comparisons have helped to illustrate the wheel–rail contact conditions and forces which are driving the observed damage and potential future enhancements to improve the accuracy of the models for predicting the observed rolling contact fatigue damage.


    Access

    Check access

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Predictive wheel–rail management in London Underground: Validation and verification


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2020-04-01


    Size :

    12 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English




    Light Rail and the London Underground

    Knowles, Richard / White, Peter | Wiley | 2003


    Underground coal mine rail wheel type high-altitude elevator

    HAN XIAOMING / LI FENG / CHEN XIQING et al. | European Patent Office | 2022

    Free access

    Comparison and Verification of Vertical Wheel-Rail Contact Models

    Yang, Jingjing / Zhang, Nan / Meng, Jiao | ASCE | 2018


    Urban rail and wheel rail health management system

    ZHANG JILIN / SHENG JUN | European Patent Office | 2022

    Free access

    Wheel/rail rolling noise, II: validation of the theory

    Remington, P.J. | Tema Archive | 1987