Wear of Hardened Roller on Track

[bsmet95]

My company manufactures monorail type cranes and carriers using proprietary patented track. Some of our trolleys (carriers) have side guide rollers, See the attachment. We have a situation in which we are getting an unusual amount of wear on the guide rollers. two trolleys are tied together with a loadbar and the load is suspended from an eyebolt in the center. The trolleys in question have a 2500 lb. capacity per 2-wheels and are travelling around a large radius curve at about 75 FPM, pulled by a tractor. This system has been in use only a few months, with near constant travel in one direction only. The rollers contact the side of the rail but generally should not be seeing a load greater than 15% of the vertical load, on two rollers. Thus far the wear is approximately 0.001" deep.

Is there a way to calculate the approximate radial load which would cause the wear?

Thanks.

 

[bsmet95]

True, I haven't been to the site. Have seen plenty of photos and videos of the operation, and been told a lot by those who've seen it. the description by dhengr is fairly close to actual operation.
Thanks for your input. I'll return after I've put out another fire to which I've been assigned.

 

[LittleInch]

Also looking at the drawing, it seems like the attachment point of the pulling bar from the tractor unit is behind the attachment point of the first trolley set of wheels to the load bearing bar? Hence this first set of trolley wheels are actually being pushed into the curve and not pulled so the force is not conducive to following the curve. Added to that depends on how these units are actually articulated. If there is a lot of load on the bearing then it will not be easy to get it to rotate or indeed get it back to exactly dead ahead. I suspect as the curve ends the trolleys will stay at a slight angle to the rail with the side roller in near constant running along the side rail.

Is it all the side rollers that get this wear or only some? The picture seems to indicate only wear on the front roller.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[bsmet95]

Thanks, everybody, for your help thus far. I need to take the info to higher-ups for some discussion.