William W. Hay Railroad Engineering Seminar

Railway vehicles and tracks are complex, sophisticated, and highly nonlinear systems.  There is one, singular location where these dynamic systems meet & interact: the wheel-rail interface.  The contact pressures and subsurface stresses generated in wheel-rail contact far exceed those seen in many engineering applications, as does the range of environmental conditions experienced at this inherently ‘open’ interface.  This leads to fascinating phenomena to understand and challenging problems to solve. This seminar will include a review of wheel-rail contact fundamentals, connecting them with more recent developments in the understanding of critical dynamics and damage modes that can have profound consequences for railway systems in terms of performance, cost, efficiency, and safety.  Finally, open questions and current areas of active research will be discussed in which developments in the areas of modeling and simulation, machine learning, and sensing technologies are being used to further understand, measure, and manage this critical interface.