Numerical analysis for fatigue life prediction on railroad RCF crack initiation

In the present paper, a numerical procedure for surface crack initiation analysis based on the critical plane approach is proposed. The complex stress/strain state of wheel and rail (W/R) contact is analysed by means of submodelling approach together with the transient contact nodal loads obtained from dynamic W/R rolling contact analysis. Meanwhile, a novel refining method is developed and utilized to discretise the full- and sub- solid models. In these models, realistic wheel and rail contact geometries and bilinear kinematic hardening material are both taken into account. The validity of the sub-modelling procedure has been successfully confirmed by simulation results comparison and cutting boundary stress ferification. Moreover, the crack initiation analysis are implemented with integration of three advanced fatigue life models. Based on the results, it can be noticed that the surface initial crack orientation may differ from each other under different critical plane definitions. Also, it is worth mentioning that the numerical procedure is effective and efficient enough for doing crack initiation analysis.