Influence of wear of traction transmission elements on life of drives of freight electric locomotives

Abstract

At operation of rolling stock all friction joints are supposed to wear especially heavy-loaded elements of freight electric locomotives. The paper analyses the distribution of failures according data of unplanned repairs and determines that a traction drive is a heavy-loaded element. The work shows its structural scheme and considers the influence of wear of traction transmission elements on drive life. The authors have processed and analysed spectrograms of a direct current freight electric locomotive. As a result, they have concluded that the reason of high dynamic loads on traction drive elements is the wear of gear wheels teeth that leads to appearance of cracks on body structures and to weakening of bolted connections. The authors propose a number of principled approaches to reduce the wear of gear transmission and body structures.