TY - JOUR A1 - Romero-Navarrete, José A. A1 - Otremba, Frank T1 - A testing facility to assess railway car infrastructure damage JF - International Journal of development and intergration N2 - Wheel forces generate stresses in the rail as a function of several vehicle and infrastructure characteristics and operating conditions. The different components of the wheel forces develop strains in the rail which contain an elastic and hysteretic (irreversible) components. The irreversible deformations of the rail would be associated with locomotive energy losses. In this paper, a testing facility is proposed to indirectly characterize the level of stresses in the rail, in terms of the energy that is lost during tuming maneuvers. Different potentially influential factors are considered, including the friction at the Center plate, the wheelbase length, the distance between bogies and the radius of the curved track. The change in the potential energy during a U-turn displacement is measured. In this respect, an experimental model under this operating principle, aimed at validating such a principle of Operation, reveals a significant effect of the friction at the center plate on the energy lost during turning maneuvers, and consequently, on the level of stresses in the rail. T2 - COMPRAIL 2020 - 17th International Conference on Railway Engineering Design & Operation 2020 CY - Online meeting DA - 01.07.2020 KW - Energy losses in transportation KW - Experimental methods KW - Friction energy KW - Rail damage KW - Turning forces KW - Wheel forces PY - 2020 DO - https://doi.org/10.2495/TDI-V4-N2-142-151 SN - 2058-8305 VL - 4 IS - 2 SP - 142 EP - 151 PB - WitPress AN - OPUS4-51125 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -