Effect of Wheel-Rail Friction on Braking Noise of High-speed Trains

FAN Enze; KANG Xi

doi:10.16490/j.cnki.issn.1001-3660.2026.17.018

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Surface Technology ›› 2026, Vol. 55 ›› Issue (17) : 213-224. DOI: 10.16490/j.cnki.issn.1001-3660.2026.17.018

Friction, Wear and Lubrication

Effect of Wheel-Rail Friction on Braking Noise of High-speed Trains

FAN Enze, KANG Xi^*

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Abstract

In order to investigate the effect of friction between wheels and rails on braking noise during the braking process of high-speed trains and analyze the theoretical suppression measures for braking noise, the work aims to establish a finite element model coupling the brake disc-pad subsystem and the wheel-rail subsystem based on the friction-induced self-excited vibration theory, simulate braking noise under three wheel-rail contact conditions including dry, wet and oil-contaminated states, and analyze the effect of brake cylinder thrust, material combinations of brake pads and brake discs, as well as surface texture of brake pads on the tendency of braking noise generation. The complex eigenvalue method was adopted to analyze the stability of the finite element model and obtain the distribution of unstable modes of the system in the frequency domain. The tendency of instability index (TOI) was adopted as the criterion to judge the possibility of braking noise occurrence, and a larger TOI value meant a stronger tendency for noise generation. The research results show that wheel-rail contact conditions have a significant impact on the braking noise tendency of high-speed trains, among which the TOI value reaches the maximum of 2 087.85 under the dry wheel-rail contact condition and falls to the minimum of 1 452.38 under the oil-contaminated condition. Under the dry wheel-rail contact state, when the brake cylinder thrust increases from 4 kN to 13 kN, the TOI value of the system fluctuates within the range from 1 855.7 to 2 087.9, hitting the minimum at the thrust of 7 kN and the maximum at 10 kN. Different material combinations of brake pads and brake discs produce distinctly different effects on noise: the combination of cast steel brake disc and copper-based powder metallurgy brake pad delivers the lowest TOI value of 1 415.53 with the maximum real part of eigenvalue being 410.36, while the combination of forged steel brake disc and resin-based composite brake pad presents the maximum TOI value of 4 042.97 and the maximum real part of eigenvalue of 943.71. For the system using brake pads with surface textures, the maximum real part of eigenvalue is 389.74 at the frequency of 7 609.8 Hz. It is concluded that wheel-rail contact conditions greatly affect the braking noise of high-speed trains, with the strongest noise generation tendency under dry conditions and the weakest under oil-contaminated conditions, which indicates that the friction between wheels and rails should be taken into consideration in studies on braking noise. Under the premise of ensuring the safe operation of trains, the possibility of braking noise occurrence is the lowest when the brake cylinder thrust is 7 kN. This is because brake cylinder thrust affects system stability by regulating the competitive coupling between the contact stiffness of brake discs and pads and wheel-rail damping, and the frictional excitation and wheel-rail dissipation suppression reach an optimal balance at 7 kN, thus minimizing the TOI value. The combination of cast steel brake disc and copper-based powder metallurgy brake pad can suppress noise effectively: the relatively high density and elastic modulus of cast steel improve the system stiffness, and its large Poisson's ratio optimizes the deformation coordination at the contact interface. The synergistic effect of these factors achieves an optimal balance between frictional excitation and system dissipation to restrain noise. Besides, brake pads with surface textures can form a more uniform contact pressure distribution during braking, so as to reduce braking noise.

Key words

braking noise / wheel-rail friction / brake cylinder thrust / material effect / complex eigenvalue analysis

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FAN Enze, KANG Xi. Effect of Wheel-Rail Friction on Braking Noise of High-speed Trains[J]. Surface Technology. 2026, 55(17): 213-224

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Funding

Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing Municipal Science and Technology Commission (CSTB2025NSCQ-GPX1284); Science and Technology Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission (KJQN202300603); Dr. Start-up Fund of Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications (E012A2023034)