Development of a numerical chain to optimize railway axles with respect to fatigue damage

In today's competitive business environment, it has become increasingly important to reduce manufacturing and raw materials cost. For this purpose, an innovative process of design and manufacturing railway axles is developed. It is based on forging hollow axles which allows a significant reduction in steel consumption. In this work, we tried to analyze how these modifications induced by this new process and design impact the service behavior and particularly the durability face to cyclic loadings that can lead to fatigue failure. In the present study, a numerical chain has been developed going from the simulation of the manufacturing process up to the analysis in fatigue. In the first step, the forging process is modeled in order to predict the residual stress field and the initial plastic strain. From this initial condition, the assembly operation of the wheel on the axle is simulated before the redistribution of stresses and strains under cyclic load. The final objective is to obtain the cyclic loading paths, in order to provide the data needed for the analysis of fatigue.