Real impact for wheel impact, as rail study steams to top
Published on 27 January, 2011
CQUniversity railway engineering researchers Professor Colin Cole, Dr Yan Sun and Mitchell McClanachan have found their study of wheel impact has made a real impact on a global level.
Their article on the calculation of wheel impact force due to the interaction between vehicle and a turnout (track change) was the 'top downloaded article' among all those published last year in the London-based Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit.
Published by SAGE Publications Ltd, this journal is part of the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
Professor Cole, who is Director of the Centre for Railway Engineering at CQUniversity, said the JRRT is an A-ranked journal recognised as the best railway specific journal in the world.
"It also shows that ‘industry-selected research' drives research that is of great interest," he said.
"This work was derived from the CRC for Rail Innovation Project on Short Pitch Irregularities chaired by Malcolm Kerr from RailCorp."
Professor Cole said that operation of trains through turnouts, that is, when it is necessary for trains to change tracks, always leads to some impacts as wheels switch from one rail to another.
"The impacts, in turn, lead to track degradation requiring maintenance. It is important to understand how to prioritise maintenance to ensure train safety and apply maintenance to the most damaging faults first to reduce costs," he said.