Dr. Babette Dirks
Address:
Department of Aeronautical and Vehicle Engineering
Division of Rail Vehicles
Royal Institute of Technology
SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Phone:
.
Education
- PhD, Vehicle and Maritime Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2015.
- Master of Science, Rail Vehicle Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2003.
Ongoing Research
The lifetime of railway wheels and rails is often limited by wear and rolling contact fatigue (RCF). A competition exists between wear and RCF: wear can worsen the contact geometry between wheel and rail, which may accelerate crack growth, but at higher wear rates – RCF does not have the opportunity to develop further.
I am working within the project . The main goal of this project is to create a model for prediction of the total expected life of wheels and rails with respect to both fatigue cracking and wear.
Publications
- Dirks B and Enblom R: Prediction model for wheel profile wear and rolling contact fatigue, Wear 271, issues 1-2, pp. 210-217, May 2011. (Available online October 16, 2010)
- Dirks B and Enblom R: Prediction of wheel profile wear and rolling contact fatigue for the Stockholm commuter train, Proceedings of the 16th International Wheelset Congress, Cape Town, March 14-19, 2010.
- Dirks B and Enblom R: Prediction model for wheel profile wear and rolling contact fatigue, Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Contact Mechanics and Wear of Rail/Wheel Systems, Florence, September 15-18, 2009.
- Dirks B and Wiersma P K: Asymmetric rail profile to prevent railway squeal noise, Internoise, Istanbul, 2007.
- Hiensch M, Dirks B, Horst J and van der Stelt J: Rail head optimisation to reach a sustainable solution preventing railway squeal noise, Internoise, Istanbul, 2007.
- Dirks B: Vehicle dynamics simulation of wheel wear for Swedish high-speed train X2000, Master of Science Thesis, Railway Technology, KTH, TRITA AVE 2003:16, ISSN 1651-7660, Stockholm, Sweden, 2003.