Wheel-rail contact elements incorporating irregularities

The aim of this study is to simulate the dynamic vertical response of a vehicle traversing rigid rails and a railway bridge. This is achieved by using the authors' wheel-rail contact element (WRC) to model the dynamic interaction that exists between a sprung wheel, using a Hertzian spring, and the rail. The objective in creating these elements was to model the rail and wheel irregularities, which was not a feature of the contact elements within the ANSYS finite element program. In this paper the numerical results generated using the authors' WRC element are identical to the results generated using the commercial contact element of ANSYS for a smooth rail condition. In the case of irregular rails, the numerical results generated using the authors' WRC elements compare very favourably with the results from the literature.