Investigation into rail corrugation in high-speed railway tracks from the viewpoint of the frictional self-excited vibration of a wheel–rail system

A finite element vibration model of a multiple wheel-rail system which consists of four wheels, one rail, and a series of sleepers is established to address the problem of rail corrugation in high-speed tracks. In the model, the creep forces between the wheels and rail are considered to be saturated and equal to the normal contact forces times the friction coefficient. The oscillation of the rail is coupled with that of wheels in the action of the saturated creep forces. When the coupling is strong, self- excited oscillation of the wheel-rail system occurs. The self-excited vibration propensity of the model is analyzed using the complex eigenvalue method. Results show that there are strong propensities of unstable self-excited vibrations whose frequencies are less than 1,200 Hz under some conditions. Preventing wheels from slipping on rails is an effective method for suppressing rail corrugation in high-speed tracks.

Elastic constants and softening of acoustic mode in K_2SnCl_6 crystal studied by Brillouin scattering

In this paper we present the Brillouin Scattering measurements of the longitudinal and transverse sound velocities for the hexahalome-atllate K2SnCl6 at room temperature . The elastic constants , refractive index , volume compressibility are determined from the Brillouin line shifts. Furthermore, the sound velocity in the [111] direction is investigated as a function of temperature 252K<T<270K . An acoustic adrupt change of the c11+2c12 mode is observed as the temperature approaches 256K from above, which has been analysed by means of the Pippard relations. The conclusion is that K2SnCl6 undergoes first order phase transition near T=256K. This acoustic anomaly can be interpreted by the nonlinear coupling of the elastic strain field to the fluctuation of the soft-mode coordinate.

Research on the influence of flexible wheelset rotation effect on wheel rail contact force

Purpose-Under the high-speed operating conditions,the effects of wheelset elastic deformation on the wheel rail dynamic forces will become more notable compared to the low-speed condition.In order to meet different analysis requirements and selecting appropriate models to analyzing the wheel rail interaction,it is crucial to understand the influence of wheelset flexibility on the wheel-rail dynamics under different speeds and track excitations condition.Design/methodology/approach-The wheel rail contact points solving method and vehicle dynamics equations considering wheelset flexibility in the trajectory body coordinate system were investigated in this paper.As for the wheel-rail contact forces,which is a particular force element in vehicle multibody system,a method for calculating the Jacobian matrix of the wheel-rail contact force is proposed to better couple the wheel-rail contact force calculation with the vehicle dynamics response calculation.Based on the flexible wheelset modeling approach in this paper,two vehicle dynamic models considering the wheelset as both elastic and rigid bodies are established,two kinds of track excitations,namely normal measured track irregularities and short-wave irregularities are used,wheel-rail geometric contact characteristic and wheel-rail contact forces in both time and frequency domains are compared with the two models in order to study the influence of flexible wheelset rotation effect on wheel rail contact force.Findings-Under normal track irregularity excitations,the amplitudes of vertical,longitudinal and lateral forces computed by the flexible wheelset model are smaller than those of the rigid wheelset model,and the virtual penetration and equivalent contact patch are also slightly smaller.For the flexible wheelset model,the wheel rail longitudinal and lateral creepages will also decrease.The higher the vehicle speed,the larger the differences in wheel-rail forces computed by the flexible and rigid wheelset model.Under track short-wave irregularity excitations,the vertical force amplitude computed by the flexible wheelset is also smaller than that of the rigid wheelset.However,unlike the excitation case of measured track irregularity,under short-wave excitations,for the speed within the range of 200 to 350 km/h,the difference in the amplitude of the vertical force between the flexible and rigid wheelset models gradually decreases as the speed increase.This is partly due to the contribution of wheelset's elastic vibration under short-wave excitations.For low-frequency wheel-rail force analysis problems at speeds of 350 km/h and above,as well as high-frequency wheel-rail interaction analysis problems under various speed conditions,the flexible wheelset model will give results agrees better with the reality.Originality/value-This study provides reference for the modeling method of the flexible wheelset and the coupling method of wheel-rail contact force to the vehicle multibody dynamics system.Furthermore,by comparative research,the influence of wheelset flexibility and rotation on wheel-rail dynamic behavior are obtained,which is useful to the application scope of rigid and flexible wheelset models.

A numerical study of hydrodynamic influence on collision of brash ice with a structural plate

The ice-structure collision is a transient process, which is further complicated by the presence of the water. It remains unclear how important the hydrodynamic influences are during the collision. This problem is partially investigated in this paper using numerical methods. To simplify the problem as much as possible without loss of generality, a short ice cylinder of circular section is assumed to collide with a vertical large structure plate under a variety of collision scenarios. Among them the most important cases are: (1) the rigid ice cylinder collision with the rigid or elastic structural plate at different collision velocities, (2) the elastic ice cylinder collision with the rigid or elastic structural plate at different collision velocities and (3) the elastoplastic ice cylinder collision with the rigid or elastic structural plate at different collision velocities. The numerical results show that: (1) the hydrodynamic influences are negligible in the first case, (2) the hydrodynamic influences in the second and third cases are not negligible, and become very significant in the third case. The influences are numerically estimated to be in the range of 20%–60% in terms of the momentum change. If the ice response is approximately decomposed into the rigid-body motions and the deformation modes at the instant of the collision with the structure, the previous conclusions show that the hydrodynamic influences on the rigid-body motions of the ice are negligible, but those on the elastic and elastoplastic modes of the ice are significant. Comparison with the case of a submerged ice cylinder (although not a practical case) reveals that the hydrodynamic influences are small in the first case due to the fact that the energy loss is used to produce the water splash and the cavity behind the ice cylinder. Through this study we come into the conclusion that the hydrodynamic influences are not important for the rigid-body motions, but important for the elastic or elastoplastic modes.