Influence of the track gradient on the contact temperature at the wheel-rail zone for open-pit locomotives

Abstract

For open-pit locomotives, application of the existing equations for calculation of the temperature for main-line railway transport is inappropriate, since it doesn`t take into account the specific conditions of the open-pit mining, such as increased track gradients (up to 60%, in another words 60m per 1 km). Therefore we proposed to calculate the temperature in the contact zone at the wheel-rail interface according to the derived equation, which takes into account the track gradient of the open pit`s rail truck. The calculation results, which were made according developed computational technique, show satisfactory repeatability with the experimental results. As the result of theoretical and experimental investigations have been discovered, that the range of the ruling gradient of the transport incline affects on the temperature changes in the wheel-rail contact zone and characterized by temperature factor of the rail track gradient k_tgr.The results of calculations, made according developed method, show satisfactory repeatability with the experimental results. The approximation error of the mining actual operating conditions factor K_mc in the range from 25% to 45% is less than 5%.