Stability of a Flexible Wheelset for High Speed Rail Vehicles With Constant and Varying Parameters

Abstract

The stability of an elastic wheelset coupled with torsional spring and damper is studied in this paper. With flexible elements between two wheels, the advantages of both rigid and independently rotating wheel systems may be obtained. Previous investigations indicated that axle flexibility will affect the vehicle dynamic behavior and an optimal design may improve the system performance. Those studies were limited to constant wheel/rail geometry as the wheelset rolls along the track. In this paper, it is intended to determine the critical speed regions for both constant and time-varying models. The variation in conicity is assumed to be periodic thus the Floquet stability concept may be employed. The computation of the state-transition matrix is based on a Runge-Kutta algorithm.