On rail vehicle vibrations induced by track unevenness: Analysis of the excitation mechanism

This paper deals with the analysis of the vibrations induced on the carbody of a rail vehicle by track unevenness. Attention is focused on the excitation mechanism of the carbody vibration modes, which has a strong influence on the vehicle's comfort. At first the problem is investigated through a simple three-degree-of-freedom analytical model, and the phenomenon of the critical velocities is analysed, pointing out how both rigid and flexible carbody vibration modes can be excited to a different extent, depending on the vehicle speed, and how they combine to produce the final carbody accelerations. Then the dynamic response of a real vehicle running on irregular track is simulated through a more detailed multibody model, suitable for quantitatively reproducing its dynamic behaviour in the 0–25 Hz frequency range. The 68 degrees-of-freedom of this model correspond to 35 rigid vibration modes of the vehicle components (carbody, bogie frames and wheelsets), plus the 33 carbody flexible modes which fall into the frequency-range of interest. In the last part of the paper, the obtained numerical results are compared to the experimental data collected during on-line tests, showing how the adopted numerical model accurately simulates the dynamic behaviour of the real vehicle at the different velocities, with very good agreement. The results presented in the paper demonstrate that the excitation of the flexible modes may have a decisive effect on carbody accelerations and that introducing carbody flexibility in the vehicle model turns out to be unavoidable for properly predicting a rail vehicle comfort performance.