With the recent remarkable improvements in the average speeds of contemporary trains, a necessity has arisen for the development of new friction modifiers to improve adhesion characteristics at the wheel-rail interface. The friction modifier must be designed to reduce slippage or sliding of the trains’ wheels on the rails under conditions of rapid acceleration or braking without excessive rolling contact wear. In this study, a novel composite material consisting of metal, ceramic, and polymer is proposed as a friction modifier to improve adhesion between wheels and rails. A blend of Al-6Cu-0.5Mg metallic powder, Al2O3 ceramic powder, and Bakelite-based polymer in various weight-fractions is hot-pressed at 150oC to form a bulk composite material. Variation in the adhesion coefficient is evaluated using a high-speed wheel-rail friction tester, with and without application of the composite friction modifier, under both dry and wet conditions. The effect of varying the weighting fractions of metal and ceramic friction powders is detailed in the paper.

This paper presents a mathematical model derived from the upper-bound theorem of concrete plasticity to rationally evaluate the shear friction strength of concrete interfaces with a construction joint. The upper limit of the shear friction strength was formulated from the limit state of concrete crushing failure on the strut-and-tie action along the construction joints to avoid overestimating the shear transfer capacity of a transverse reinforcement with a high clamping force. The present model approach proposed that the cohesion and coefficient of friction of concrete can be set to be 0.27(fck)0.65 and 0.95, respectively, for rough construction joints and 0.11(fck)0.65 and 0.64, respectively, for smooth ones, where fck is the compressive strength of concrete. From the comparisons with 155 data compiled from the available literature, the proposed model gave lower values of standard deviation and coefficient of variation of the ratios between predictions and experiments than AASHTO and fib 2010 equations, indicating that the proposed model has consistent trends with test results, unlike the significant underestimation results of such code equations in evaluating the shear friction strength.