Time-domain prediction of impact noise from wheel flats based on measured profiles

Railway impact noise is caused by discrete rail or wheel irregularities, such as wheel flats, rail joints, switches and crossings. In order to investigate impact noise generation, a time-domain wheel/rail interaction model is needed to take account of nonlinearities in the contact zone. A nonlinear Hertzian contact spring is commonly used for wheel/rail interaction modelling but this is not sufficient to take account of actual surface defects which may include large geometry variations. A time-domain wheel/rail interaction model with a more detailed numerical non-Hertzian contact is developed here and used with surface roughness profiles from field measurements of a test wheel with a flat. The impact vibration response and noise due to the wheel flat are predicted using the numerical model and found to be in good agreement with the measurements. Moreover, compared with the Hertzian theory, a large improvement is found at high frequencies when using the detailed contact model.