Abstract: In order to investigate the effect of different wheel-rail non-hertzian rolling contact approaches on wheel-rail rolling contact behavior in railway turnout, a wheel-rail rolling contact model taking into account the relative motion of stock/switch rails is built which taking a switch panel of railway turnout as the example, and the computational accuracy and efficiency of wheel-rail normal and tangential rolling contact behavior by Kalker three-dimensional rolling contact theory, Kik-Piotrowski, Ayasse-Chollet and Sichani method are calculated and compared. The results showed that, compared with Kalker three-dimensional theory, the computational accuracy of Sichani method is highest when calculating the wheel-rail normal and tangential rolling contact behavior in switch panel of railway turnout, and the maximum calculation error is within 10%. The computational accuracy of Sichani method is reduced when solving the maximum value of tangential contact stress under the case of pure spin, and the calculation error is about 30%. The computational efficiency of Kik-Piotrowski method is the highest, Ayasse-Chollet and Sichani method take the second place, and the Kalker three-dimensional theory takes the longest time. Combined with the computational accuracy and efficiency, Sichani method is the more reasonable method to simulate the wheel-rail rolling contact behavior in railway turnout.

Key words: railway turnout, non-hertzian, rolling contact, normal, tangential, relative motion of stock/switch rails