Requirement
Hairline crack at the wagon wheel hub is the failure observed by customer. This is found to be a premature failure and wanted us to analyse the root cause of this failure.
Load carried by wheel hub is about 35T, assessed fatigue failure is the common cause. Fatigue analysis is carried out to understand the fatigue life and crack initiation location.
Solution
Various possible loads such as dead load, braking and accelerating forces and centrifugal forces during rolling over a curved track were considered. Acceleration with dead load was considered as the worst case scenario where all the forces are presumed to be acting simultaneously.
