Optimal design of rail grinding patterns based on a rail grinding target profile

Based on the grinding target profile of the rail and the grinding capacity of a single grinding stone, a numerical calculation method for rail grinding patterns that includes grinding angle and grinding power of each grinding stone of the GMC96 rail grinding train was designed and established. By means of this numerical method, the grinding pattern of each grinding pass was optimized and the rail head profile after grinding was calculated. Furthermore, a method for the evaluation of the grinding quality is provided. The results indicate that in multipass rail grinding, a sequence of grinding passes – where the greatest grinding effort is applied on the earlier passes, with the last pass applying reducing levels of grinding effort – produces the highest conformance to the target grinding profile. For example, when rail grinding is planned for two passes, applying 60% of the total grinding effort on the first pass and 40% on the second pass decreases the final grinding error by 7.3%.