Industry Spotlight: Rail Featuring Dr. Nina Heinrich, Lead Structural Engineer, Trelleborg Antivibration Systems

Trelleborg AVS leads the way in noise and vibration control with advanced polymer technology and world-class expertise in rubber-to-metal bonding. While their innovations serve industries from machine tools to marine and mass transit, this episode will spotlight their groundbreaking work in rail applications.

Join us as Dr. Nina Heinreich shares her work predicting a rubber spring’s Wohler line with Endurica in the presence of self-contact.

Abstract: Fatigue tests with different load amplitudes under fully relaxing conditions were carried out to obtain the Wohler line of a conical rubber-to-metal spring, which is representative for railway applications. Using Abaqus FEA, the same load cases were simulated to calculate the strain histories and, subsequently, a fatigue life prediction from Endurica. A close agreement between measured and calculated life was found, in particular for low load amplitude. At high amplitude, the calculation overestimates the life about a factor of three. For this type of deviation self-contact, which intensifies with increasing load, is discussed as a likely reason. Further challenges, i. e. extrapolation of measured material properties and varying failure criterions, will be highlighted.