Refining and enhancing the modelling of vehicle-track interaction

Abstract

The wheel-rail contact is a determining element for the running behaviour of a railway vehicle. In several cases it can be very sensitive to the relative kinematics between wheel and rail, which does not only depend on the motions of the entire wheelset, but also on structural deformations of both wheelset and rail. In order to develop a refined vehicle-track model, the wheelsets and the rails are modelled as flexible bodies; they are coupled with a very detailed model of the wheel-rail contact. Using this refined modelling, the running behaviour of a passenger coach is investigated for the scenarios of centred running and permanent hunting, which are also simulated for different track geometries and different friction coefficients in the wheel-rail contact. The results show that for certain configurations the structural deformations can have a strong impact on the wheel-rail contact and on the running behaviour of the vehicle. The influence on the hunting is particularly strong for high conicities and high values of the friction coefficient.