Curve squealing of trains: Measurement, modelling and simulation

Curve squealing of railway wheels occurs erratically in narrow curves with a frequency of about 4kHz. Squealing is caused by a self-excited stick-slip oscillation in the wheel–rail contact. The mechanism which activates squeal is still unexplained and will be analyzed in the paper at hand. The squeal model consists of the first modal forms of an elastic wheel and is equipped with a three-dimensional hard Coulomb contact. Based on this model, a linear stability analysis of the stationary run through a curve is performed for the four wheels of the investigated bogie. The results show that in particular the front inner wheel tends to squeal. A numerical simulation of the system's differential inclusions performed on the unstable states shows the existence of a self-excited stick-slip oscillation. The computed frequency of the limit cycle agrees well with the measurements. The design of the squeal model, the steps necessary to perform the stability analysis on systems with non-ideal constraints, as well as the non-smooth dynamics code used to perform the simulations are explained in detail.