To improve the service performance of subway wheels,the mass fraction of Si,Mn,Cr elements in the original CL60 steel material used for the subway wheels was redesigned and optimized,and a new type of CL60 steel subway wheels was developed.The wear characteristics of the original CL60 steel wheel and the new CL60 steel wheel under laboratory conditions were studied by simulating wheel-rail wear test using GPM-60 rolling contact fatigue testing machine.The size of the wheel-rail specimen,the applied load and rotational speed in the simulation were determined based on Hertz simulation criterion.Through the friction and wear test under different loads and the microstructure analysis of wheel-rail materials,the wear amount,wear rate,surface morphology and plastic deformation of the two CL60 steel wheel-rail samples were compared and analyzed,and the performance of the new CL60 steel wheel was evaluated.The results show that,compared with the original CL60 steel wheels,the abrasion loss of the new CL60 steel wheel sample,the total abrasion loss of the wheel and rail,the thickness of the plastic deformation layer on the friction surface of the new CL60 steel wheel sample are significantly reduced under different loads.The new CL60 steel wheel has better anti-wear and anti-plastic deformation ability.