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.

Three Dimensional Laser Point Cloud Slicing Method for Calculating Irregular Volume

Volume parameter is the basic content of a spatial body object morphology analysis.However,the challenge lies in the volume calculation of irregular objects.The point cloud slicing method proposed in this study effectively works in calculating the volume of the point cloud of the spatial object obtained through three-dimensional laser scanning(3DLS).In this method,a uniformly spaced sequent slicing process is first conducted in a specific direction on the point cloud of the spatial object obtained through 3DLS.A series of discrete point cloud slices corresponding to the point cloud bodies are then obtained.Subsequently,the outline boundary polygon of the point cloud slicing is searched one by one in accordance with the slicing sequence and areas of the polygon.The point cloud slice is also calculated.Finally,the individual point cloud section volume is calculated through the slicing areas and the adjacent slicing gap.Thus,the total volume of the scanned spatial object can be calculated by summing up the individual volumes.According to the results and analysis of the calculated examples,the slice-based volume-calculating method for the point cloud of irregular objects obtained through 3DLS is correct,concise in process,reliable in results,efficient in calculation methods,and controllable on accuracy.This method comes as a good solution to the volume calculation of irregular objects.

A generalized set of correlations for plus fraction characterization

The importance of accurate determination of the critical properties of plus fractions in prediction of phase behaviour of hydrocarbon mixtures by equations of state is well known in the petroleum industry. It has been stated in various papers （Elsharkawy, 2001） that using the plus fraction as a single group in equation of state calculations reduces the accuracy of the results. However in this work it has been shown that using the proper values of critical temperature and pressure for the plus fraction group can estimate the properties of hydrocarbon mixtures, and they are accurate enough to be used in reservoir engineering and enhanced oil recovery calculations. In this paper, a new method is proposed for calculating the critical properties of plus fractions of petroleum fluids. One can use this method either in predicting critical pressure and temperature of single carbon numbers （SCNs） after the splitting process or in predicting critical pressure and temperature of the plus fraction as a single group. A comparison study is performed against Riazi-Daubert correlation （Riazi and Daubert, 1987） and Sancet correlations （Sancet, 2007） for 25 oil samples taken from 14 fields from southwest Iran. The results indicate the superiority of the proposed method to the Riazi-Daubert and Sancet correlations.

Vacancy formation enthalpies of high-entropy FeCoCrNi alloy via first-principles calculations and possible implications to its superior radiation tolerance

Because atoms in high-entropy alloys （HEAs） coordinate in very different and distorted local environ- ments in the lattice sites, even for the same type of constituent, their point defects could highly vary. Therefore, theoretical determination of the thermodynamic quantities （i.e., defect formation enthalpies） of various point defects is rather challenging because each corresponding thermodynamic quantity of all involve constituents is not unique. The knowledge of these thermodynamic quantities is prerequisite for designing novel HEAs and understanding the mechanical and physical behaviors of HEAs. However, to date there has not been a good method to theoretically derive the defect formation enthalpies of HEAs. Here, using first-principles calculations within the density functional theory （DFT） in combina- tion of special quasi-random structure models （SQSs）, we have developed a general method to derive corresponding formation enthalpies of point defects in HEAs, using vacancy formation enthalpies of a four-component equiatomic fcc-type FeCoCrNi HEA as prototypical and benchmark examples. In difference from traditional ordered alloys, the vacancy formation enthalpies of FeCoCrNi HEA vary in a highly wide range from 0.72 to 2.89 eV for Fe, 0.88-2.90 eV for Co, 0.78-3.09 eV for Cr, and 0.91-2.95 eV for Ni due to high-level site-to-site lattice distortions and compositional complexities. On average, the vacancy formation enthalpies of 1.58 eV for Fe, 1.61 eV for Cr, 1.70 eV for Co and 1.89 eV for Ni are all larger than that （1.41 eV） of pure fcc nickel. This fact implies that the vacancies are much more difficult to be created than in nickel, indicating a reasonable agreement with the recent experimental observation that FeCoCrNi exhibits two orders of amplitudes enhancement of radiation tolerance with the suppression of void formation at elevated temperatures than in pure nickel.

The enhanced volume source boundary point method for the calculation of acoustic radiation problem

The Volume Source Boundary Point Method (VSBPM) is greatly improved so that it will speed up the VSBPM's solution of the acoustic radiation problem caused by the vibrating body. The fundamental solution provided by Helmholtz equation is enforced in a weighted residual sense over a tetrahedron located on the normal line of the boundary node to replace the coefficient matrices of the system equation. Through the enhanced volume source boundary point analysis of various examples and the sound field of a vibrating rectangular box in a semi-anechoic chamber, it has revealed that the calculating speed of the EVSBPM is more than 10 times faster than that of the VSBPM while it works on the aspects of its calculating precision and stability, adaptation to geometric shape of vibrating body as well as its ability to overcome the non-uniqueness problem.

Formulas of exact calculation of discrepancy of low-dimensionalfinite point sets (Ⅱ)

This letter is a continuation of refs.[1] and [2]. Let d≥2, Sd={uk（1≤k≤n）} be a finiteset of points in the d-dimensional unit cube [0, 1)d, where uk=(u1,k, u2,k,…,ud,k)