Adhesion railway

An adhesion railway relies on adhesion traction to move the train, and is the most widespread and common type of railway in the world. Adhesion traction is the frictional grip force between the locomotive's drive wheels and the steel rail. Because the vast majority of railways are adhesion railways, the term adhesion railway is only used when it is necessary to distinguish adhesion railways from other types of railways with trains that are moved by other methods, such as by a stationary engine or motor pulling on a cable or chain attached to the carriages, or by a pinion gear meshing with a rack.

The friction between the wheels and rails occurs in the wheel–rail interface, or contact patch. The traction force, the braking forces and the centering forces all contribute to stable, smooth running. However, running friction increases costs, due to higher fuel and energy consumption and increased maintenance work needed to address fatigue damage and wear on rail heads and on the wheel rims, and rail movement from traction and braking forces.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.