• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.31 no.7 s.262
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• pp.756-763
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• 2007

The majority of catastrophic wheel failures are caused by surface opening fatigue cracks either in the wheel tread or wheel flange areas. The inclined cracks at railway wheel tread are initiated and the cracks are caused by wheel damage-spatting after 60,000 km running. Because the failured railway wheel is reprofiled before regular wheel reprofiling, the maintenance cost for the railway wheel is increased. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the mechanism for initiation of crack. In the present paper, the combined effect on railway wheels of a periodically varying contact pressure and an intermittent thermal braking loading is investigated. To analyze damage cause for railway wheels, the measurements for replication of wheel surface and the effect of braking application in field test are carried out. The result shows that the damages in railway wheel tread are due to combination of thermal loading and ratcheting.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.966-970
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• 2011

The thermo-mechanical interaction between brake block and wheel tread during braking has been found to cause thermal crack on the wheel tread. Due to thermal expansion of the rim material, the thermal cracks will protrude from the wheel tread and be more exposed to wear during the wheel/block contact than the rest of the tread surface. The wheel rim is in residual compression stress when is new. After service running, the region in the tread has reversed to tension. This condition can lead to the formation and growth of thermal cracks in the rim which can ultimately lead to premature failure of wheel. In the present paper, the thermal cracks of railway wheel, one of severe damages on the wheel tread, were evaluated to understand the safety of railway wheel in running condition. The residual stresses for damaged wheel which are applied to tread brake are investigated. Mainly X-ray diffusion method is used. Under the condition of concurrent loading of continuous rolling contact with rails and cyclic frictional heat from brake blocks, the reduction of residual stress is found to correlate well with the thermal crack initiation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.524-529
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• 2008

The damaged wheel in railway vehicle would cause a poor ride comfort, a rise in the maintenance cost and even fracture of the wheel, which then leads to a tremendous social and economical cost. The defect initiation and crack propagation in wheel may result in the damage of the railway vehicle or derailment. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the characteristics of the wheel tread. In the present paper, the characteristics of wheel tread based on contact positions, running distance and brake pattern are evaluated. The result shows that the damaged wheel tread is remarkably depended on the contact positions between wheel and rail.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.423-430
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• 2002

This study was started to develop maintenance technology for wheel tread suitable domestic railway environment. As a pre-study to develop optima] wheel tread, we analyzed the wear characteristics of wheel tread that is being applied to railway rolling-stock in KNR. To analyze wheel wear characteristics. we have conducted the simulation and experiment for passenger rolling-stock and obtained useful datum. Here, we describe some results.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.71-77
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• 2007

The surface of railway wheel tread in wheel-rail system can not be free from wear because of various circumstance such as railway condition, maintenance condition, weather condition, characteristics of wheel surface's geometrical shape, and vehicle suspension's structural characteristics etc. Therefore, the research on wear reduction and maintenance method are very important to ensure the safety of railway vehicle, to improve car comfort and to decrease maintenance cost. In this study, the wear rates of railway wheel have been periodically measured in terms of the running distance of Electrical Multiple Unit which have been currently operated and the microstructure transformation of wheel tread using replication method have been performed. The results show that the relations between the flange wear and tread microstructure are depended on running distance and it will supply basic data on wheel maintenance.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.31-36
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• 2008

$DF_{21}$ diesel locomotive was designed to satisfy the requirement of Kunming Meter track and the 2Co self-guided radial bogie was used to suit the complex curve track. There are totally 12 locomotives was served on the track. The first two locomotives were devotion running on the track since April 2003, the wheel tread splling was occurred on the middle wheel set of the two locomotives after running nearly 150 thousands km on the track of the two locomotives at August 2004. The dynamic analysis was carried out to find the reason. The wheel set longitudinal vibration resonance phenomenon was existed on the locomotive dynamic performance, and this was caused by the too big longitudinal stiffness of the journal box bar on the middle wheel set. Wheel set longitudinal vibration resonance maybe an important reason of lead to wheel tread spalling. The corresponding mend methods were put forward from the point of view of wheel set longitudinal vibration resonance. All the wheel tread of the 12 locomotives on the middle wheel set were in good condition and not occurred the wheel tread spalling after the mend till December 2007 after 350 thousands km were finished. The mechanism of the wheel tread splling and corresponding mend method was discussed in detail in this paper.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.537-542
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• 2011

The thermo-mechanical interaction between brake block and wheel tread during braking has been found to cause thermal crack on the wheel tread. Due to thermal expansion of the rim material, the thermal cracks will protrude from the wheel tread and be more exposed to wear during the wheel/block contact than the rest of the tread surface. The wheel rim is in residual compression stress when is new. After service running, the region in the tread has reversed to tension. This condition can lead to the formation and growth of thermal cracks in the rim which can ultimately lead to premature failure of wheel. In the present paper, the thermal cracks of railway wheel, one of severe damages on the wheel tread, were evaluated to understand the safety of railway wheel in running condition. The residual stresses for damaged wheel which are applied to tread brake are investigated. Mainly X-ray diffusion method is used. Under the condition of concurrent loading of continuous rolling contact with rails and cyclic frictional heat from brake blocks, the reduction of residual stress is found to correlate well with the thermal crack initiation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.10 no.1 s.38
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• pp.1-6
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• 2007

Railway wheels in service are regularly checked by ultrasonic testing, acoustic emission and eddy current testing method and so on. However, ultrasonic testing is sometimes inadequate for sensitively detecting the cracks in railway wheel which is mainly because of the fact of crack closure. Recently, many researchers have actively fried to improve precision for defect detection of railway wheel. The development of a nondestructive measurement tool for wheel defects and its use for the maintenance of railway wheels would be useful to prevent wheel failure. The induced current focusing potential drop(ICFPD) technique is a new non-destructive tasting technique that can detect defects in railway wheels by applying on electro-magnetic field and potential drops variation. In the present paper, the ICFPD technique is applied to the detection of surface and internal defects for railway wheels. To defect the defects for railway wheels, the sensor for ICFPD is optimized and the tests are carried out with respect to 4 surface defects and 6 internal defects each other. The results show that the surface crack depth of 0.5 mm and internal crack depth of 0.7 mm in wheel tread could be detected by using this method. The ICFPB method is useful to detect the defect that initiated in the tread of railway wheels

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.641-644
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• 2003

The running safety of the rolling stock depends on the design characteristics and the contact condition between wheel and railway. In this study, it is analyzed how equivalent conicity of wheel tread or its characteristics has influence on the running safety.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.411-416
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• 2002

The strength evaluation of a wheel is becoming very important due to the high speed of railway system and the reduction of wheel weight. Therefore, in this study, the influence of thermal stress at tread breaking in Korean High Speed Train wheel was investigated using FEM. During FEM analysis, the mechanical load or wheel-rail contract load and braking load were considered. When 300% of the block force was applied, the maximum von Mises stress of 61.0 ㎫ was found at the outside plate around 400mm far away from the wheel center.