It has been difficult to detect lateral contact point of rail and wheel, though technology of instrumented wheelset has advanced in the
last 20 years. Therefore, it is interesting and worth while to study on method of measuring rail/wheel contact point and contact force of
running railway vehicles, since many things in real rail/wheel contact phenomenon are still unknown.
Recently, we have tried to develop a method of measuring rail/wheel contact point by improving conventional method of measuring
wheel load and lateral force in which strain of the disk surface is used for measuring these forces.
Firstly surface strain on disk type wheel is analyzed by an FEM program, NASTRAN, under the condition that vertical, lateral, or
longitudinal force separately acts on various points along the wheel profile. By the calculated result, it shows possibility of detecting the
rail/wheel contact point by means of measuring lateral distribution of compress strain which changes according to the load position, i.e.
rail/wheel contact point.