Survey of Wheel—Rail Rolling Contact Theory

Abstract

This paper describes the theory of frictional rolling contact as far as it is significant for the wheel-rail system. It is divided into two parts. The first part, mostly non-mathematical, contains a historical survey from the times of Carter and Fromm (1926) to the present day, in which all aspects of rolling contact theory are discussed. Included are a quantitative account of the results of Hertz theory (Section 3), and a table of the creepage and spin coefficients. The second part gives a present day account of the simplified theory (Section 4), and of the exact linear and non-linear theory (Section 5). The paper closes with some recommendations for future research, of which the most pressing is a thorough investigation of the accuracy of simplified theory.