For the inadequacies of the traditional heat loading methods to simulate the tread braking,such as the lower computational accuracy in the evenly source method and the lower computational efficiency in the moving source method,a new heat flux loading method called intermittent heat source method was put forward to calculate the wheel temperature rising due to tread braking.The computational accuracy and efficiency of the intermittent heat source method was analyzed and compared with moving heat source method and evenly heat source method with the help of the finite element model based on emergency braking of a heavy haul train.The results show that the computational accuracy of intermittent heat source method is equivalent to that of moving heat source method,while far higher than that of evenly heat source method.The temperaturetime curves of intermittent heat source method and moving heat source method have a common phenomenon of fluctuation,which simulates the phenomenon of actual physical processes when wheel tread braking.The computational efficiency of intermittent heat source method is equivalent to that of evenly heat source method,while 4.3 times faster than that of moving heat source method