TY - JOUR

T1 - The impact of structural flexibilities of wheelsets and rails on the hunting behaviour of a railway vehicle

AU - Kaiser, Ingo

AU - Poll, Gerhard

AU - Voss, Gerhard

AU - Vinolas, Jordi

N1 - Funding Information: Part of the work has been carried out by the first author within the project “Next Generation Train” funded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) during his employment at the Institute of System Dynamics and Control at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen. The support is gratefully acknowledged.

PY - 2019/4/3

Y1 - 2019/4/3

N2 - The hunting motion of a passenger coach is investigated using a multibody system in which the wheelsets and the rails can be modelled as flexible bodies. By comparing the results for different model variants, in which the structural flexibilities of the wheelsets and of the rails are either taken into account or neglected, the impact of the flexibilities is analysed. It turns out that the flexibilities of both the wheelsets and the rails have a significant impact on the hunting behaviour by increasing the lateral motions of the wheelsets and lowering the critical speed. In order to investigate the impact of the flexibilities under different operating conditions, the calculations are carried out for track geometries using different rail profiles (60E1, 60E2) and different rail cants (1:40, 1:20) and for different values for the friction coefficient (0.25…0.4) at the wheel–rail contact. The results show that the influence of the flexibilities is the strongest for high lateral forces, which occur e.g. for contact geometries leading to high hunting frequencies and for high values of the friction coefficient. The results also show in some cases a strong impact of the flexibilities on the position of the wheel–rail contact on the running surface of the rail, which is of particular interest with respect to wear simulation.

AB - The hunting motion of a passenger coach is investigated using a multibody system in which the wheelsets and the rails can be modelled as flexible bodies. By comparing the results for different model variants, in which the structural flexibilities of the wheelsets and of the rails are either taken into account or neglected, the impact of the flexibilities is analysed. It turns out that the flexibilities of both the wheelsets and the rails have a significant impact on the hunting behaviour by increasing the lateral motions of the wheelsets and lowering the critical speed. In order to investigate the impact of the flexibilities under different operating conditions, the calculations are carried out for track geometries using different rail profiles (60E1, 60E2) and different rail cants (1:40, 1:20) and for different values for the friction coefficient (0.25…0.4) at the wheel–rail contact. The results show that the influence of the flexibilities is the strongest for high lateral forces, which occur e.g. for contact geometries leading to high hunting frequencies and for high values of the friction coefficient. The results also show in some cases a strong impact of the flexibilities on the position of the wheel–rail contact on the running surface of the rail, which is of particular interest with respect to wear simulation.

KW - flexible track

KW - Flexible wheelset

KW - hunting

KW - wheel–rail geometry

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85048780775&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/00423114.2018.1484933

DO - 10.1080/00423114.2018.1484933

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85048780775

VL - 57

SP - 564

EP - 594

JO - Vehicle System Dynamics

JF - Vehicle System Dynamics

SN - 0042-3114

IS - 4

ER -