Influence of Wheel-Rail Contact Model on the Prediction of Preferential Wavelengths in Rail Corrugation

Rail corrugation is among the main issues related to urban railway lines and ap-pears as a quasi-periodic irregularity on the running surface on the rail. A vehicle running on corrugated rails may generate ground-borne vibrations that propagate to buildings in the proximity of the railway line with possible complaints from the inhabitants. For this reason, a mathematical model for the prediction of preferen-tial wavelengths of corrugation formation is a useful tool to support both the de-sign of railway lines and infrastructure managers when the system is in operation. It permits to identify the root causes of the phenomenon and the effectiveness of potential mitigation actions. To this aim, a wheel-rail interaction model is formu-lated in the frequency domain. It is used to study the phenomenon on a sharp curve of a subway network, where corrugation appears on the low rail. In this paper, the effect of the tangential wheel-rail contact model on the evaluation of corrugation wavelengths is investigated. As a general comment, the wheel-rail in-teraction model is able to correctly predict the corrugation formation on the low rail and its wavelength, regardless of the considered force-creepage theory.