Mechanical analysis and measurement of wheel-rail contact system in large aperture radio telescope

The azimuth rotation part of a large aperture radio telescope usually takes one wheel-rail system; therefore, wheel-rail pointing errors and wheel-rail wear are very important to antenna point accuracy. First, this paper discusses the wheelrail contact theory and some specific characteristics of wheel-rail system in large aperture radio telescope. Second, one 3D model of wheel-rail contact system is built according to the parameters of 50m antenna in China, and the model is analyzed by one whole body in MSC.Patran/Nastran. Third, we use the multi-body dynamic method to build the model of wheel-rail and simulate it in RecurDyn software. Comparing the simulation results, we find that the coupling of rigidbody and soft-body is much more precise than one whole body in describing the contact deformation. And the results also explain the crevice’s influence on the mechanical properties of wheel-rail contact system. Finally, some experiments and measurements of 50m antenna are made, by which we get some useful tips for large aperture radio telescope. The test results show that the multi-body dynamic method is much more suitable to the mechanical analysis in wheel-rail contact system.