Study of Wheel-Rail Vibration in Railways
Authors: Axinte Tiberiu 
Published: October 2014

Together with the rapid development of high-speed railways, extensive research into railway technologies is compulsory, especially on the aspect of dynamic interactions between vehicle and railway line, in order to guarantee the operational security of vehicles at high speed and improve the passengers comfort. The increase in the severity of the dynamic interaction between wheel and rail arises from the increasing speed of trains. As a result, it is necessary to analyze for the characteristics of wheel-rail vibration. The curve is an important component of a railway line and is usually the very source of wheel-rail vibration, especially at the time when a vehicle rapidly passes through a railway line, and will seriously affect the safety and comfort of the vehicle. At present, the usual practice is to only take some limit values to design the vertical section of railway lines, such as the maximum slope and the minimum slope length, according to the grade of a certain right line. Moreover, the existing studies on the vertical curve focused more on the vertical section parameters without considering the influence of these parameters on the dynamic interaction between the vehicle and line. The aforementioned studies involve either static or quasi-static analysis. There is little literature available on using a systematic method based on dynamics to study wheel-rail vibration, and some related issues are mainly the assessment making for a certain line. Based on the multi-body dynamics and the existing achievements, this paper aims to systematically investigate the influence of vertical section parameters on the characteristics of wheel-rail vibration and discuss the relationship between the acting region of wheel-rail vibration and these parameters. Furthermore, the characteristics of wheel-rail vibration at different velocities are investigated. The evaluation of the vibrations behavior in a railway vehicle is one of the matters taken into consideration even from the design stage. The decrease of vibrations to an acceptable level in terms of running behavior, safety, passengers comfort and track fatigue is required by regulations at European level for vehicle homologation and their admission into traffic.The vibrations of railway vehicles are mainly produced by the interaction between the track and the rail. Regarding a track with irregularities or deviations from the ideal geometry it creates vibrations of vehicles, which are developed both vertically and horizontally. These two types of vibrations are decoupled, though, due to the construction symmetries (inertial, elastic, plastic, linear and geometric). As for the vertical vibrations, the bounce and pitch vibrations are the main reasons of the vehicles dynamic behavior. They can be studied on simple models, one or two degrees of freedom, based on the hypothesis of excitation symmetry, by considering only one mobile base as if the wheel-sets had identical motions . This is the reason why the results with these models can be overestimated.This paper presents the influence of vehicle wheel bases and of the steel tire in running conditions, depending on some geometric characteristics. The influence will be further reflected by the vehicles response to the crossing over the rolling track random irregularities and in the magnitude of the vertical accelerations. This is the reason why the complete model of a passenger vehicle has been accounted for, including the car body bending vibrations. The movement equations have been treated in an original manner and brought to a form that points out the symmetrical and anti-symmetrical decoupled movements of vehicle and their excitation modes.