Natural frequency evaluation of a composite train carbody with length of 23 m

This paper explains numerical and experimental studies to evaluate the natural frequencies of a composite carbody of the Korean tilting train. The composite carbody with a length of 23 m was manufactured as a sandwich structure composed of 40-mm thick aluminum honeycomb core and 5-mm thick woven fabric carbon/epoxy face. From the finite element analysis, the composite carbody had a first bending natural frequency of 11.67 Hz and a first torsional natural frequency of 14.4 Hz. In order to verify the numerical results, the natural frequency measuring tests were performed. The measured first bending and torsional natural frequencies of the composite carbody were 10.25 and 11.0 Hz, respectively. Both of these results satisfied the design requirement.