Evaluation of residual stress and fatigue crack growth in high- speed railway wheel web plate

Rolling contact between wheels and rails causes various types of damage to the contact surface. To reduce this damage, the rim, which includes the contact surface of the wheel, is subjected to heat treatment to generate compressive residual stress(CRS). However, the generation of this stress causes tensile residual stress(TRS) in the web plate, leading to equilibrium and accelerating crack initiation and propagation. Damage to wheels mostly originates from the contact surface where rolling contact occurs. Nevertheless, there are cases in which wheels are damaged by cracking in the web plate. In this study, the characteristics of fatigue crack growth in defects that occur in the web plate of a high-speed railway wheel were evaluated. The residual stress generated during manufacturing was evaluated through finite element (FE) analysis, and the characteristics of fatigue crack growth in terms of magnitude of residual stress were investigated using the extended finite element method. The FE analysis shows that residual stress generated during manufacturing significantly affects crack growth rate. In particular, the crack growth rate increased approximately 5.8 times compared to the case without residual stress.