Investigation of effect of wheel/track irregularities on the dynamic response of the railway track using bond graph

Abstract

With the introduction of high speed trains, there is a growing interest in vehicle-track interaction studies. Wheel/track interaction behavior is important to design vehicle/track to assure safe operation at high operating speed. The impact generated at rail/wheel interface due to presence of wheel/rail irregularity may be extremely high and produces a serious threat to safety of vehicle and track structure. The accurate modelling of vehicle track interaction helps designer to find the probable causes of vehicle and track damage. The dynamic force generated due to presence of a wheel or track irregularity is studied in the present work using bond graph. A building block approach is used to construct the integrated vehicle track model. A four-layer track system model is considered. The contact between wheel and rail is modeled by nonlinear Hertzian theory and rail as continuous Euler’s beam. The coupled model is simulated for given parameters to study the effect of wheel/track irregularities on the dynamic response of track. © 2018 Society for Modeling & Simulation International (SCS).