Abstract: The partial wear of wheelset is a common form of wheel wear for railway vehicles. Through a wheel wear investigation of a certain metro line in China, a significant partial wear phenomenon is observed. The left wheels are mainly worn on the flange, while the right wheels are mainly worn on the tread. The principle causes of the wheel partial wear are that the metro line possesses many small radius curves, the distribution of the left and right curves is severely uneven, and the vehicles don't reverse periodically. In order to mitigate the wheel partial wear, the wheel wear prediction model is established based on the UM dynamics software, which is verified by the metro wheel wear measurement results. According to the numerical simulation results, the solutions of the wheel partial wear are proposed. The vehicle periodical reversion can significantly mitigate the wheel partial wear, and the optimal reversion mileage is 2×10⁴-4×10⁴ km. The proportion of the small radius curve has a great influence on the wheel wear. It does not need to take the measure of periodical reversion when the percentage difference between the left and right curves is less than 3%.

Key words: metro vehicle, wheel wear, partial wear, numerical simulation, small radius curves