High-Frequency Vertical Wheel-Rail Contact Forces at High Vehicle Speeds-The Influence of Wheel Rotation

Paper in proceeding, 2012

Dynamic vehicle-track interaction at high vehicle speeds is investigated in a frequency range from about 20 Hz to 3 kHz. The inclusion of wheel rotation in the vehicle model is investigated by implementing a structural dynamics model of a rotating wheelset in an existing simulation environment. Calculated wheel-rail contact forces using this comprehensive flexible wheelset model are compared with contact forces based on less detailed, non-rotating wheelset models. Load cases including broad-band wheel-rail excitation due to vertical rail irregularities (rail corrugation) and impact excitation caused by a local deviation from the nominal wheel radius (wheel flat) are considered. Viewed from the excitation point, each wheelset resonance peak of multiplicity two splits into two peaks; the separation of the two peaks increases with increasing rotational speed. If the wheelset model is excited at a frequency where two different mode shapes, due to the wheel rotation, have coinciding resonance frequencies, the contact force calculated for the rotating wheelset model differs significantly from those of the non-rotating models. Further, the use of a flexible rotating wheelset model is recommended for load cases leading to large magnitude contact force components in the high-frequency range (above 1.5 kHz). In particular, the influence of the radial wheel eigenmodes with two or three nodal diameters is significant.