Paper Title
Effect of Varying Web Plate Thickness for Parabolic Shaped Locomotive Wheel Profile `

Abstract
Railway locomotive wheel profile consists of three main portions which include hub portion, web plate portion and rim portion. Due to the heavy contact application of loads on rim portion the internal stresses are developed in the web plate portion. In this present paper parabolic locomotive wheel profile is considered for the study and analysis due to the change of web plate thickness in the profile. The models with varying web plate thickness are designed by using 3-d modeling software CATIA V5 R20. Static, modal and thermo-mechanical analyses are conducted by using the finite element analysis commercial tool ANSYS 15.0. Axi-symmetric analysis is chosen for the study. AAR high carbon steel material is chosen for the analysis. Stresses, displacements, natural frequencies are studied and stresses, displacements due to combined application of mechanical and static loads are also studied by varying the web plate thickness and the better web plate thickness is determined for the wheel profile. Keywords - Parabolic locomotive wheel profile, web plate thickness, stresses, displacements, natural frequencies, ANSYS 15.0.