Computer Simulation of the Response of a Railway Vehicle Carbody

In this paper, a nonlinear mathematical model has been constructed by deriving the equations of motion of a Rail Vehicle carbody using Newton’s law. The nonlinear formula is used to evaluate the wheel rail contact forces. The nonlinear profile of wheel and rail are taken into account. Also the lateral stiffness of the track is taken into consideration. The equations of motion are derived for (a) Carbody with conventional wheelset (b) Carbody with unconventional wheelset (independently rotating wheels). For lateral vibration, 17 degrees of freedom are considered. The degrees of freedom represent lateral and yaw movements of 4 wheelsets and lateral, yaw and roll movements of the bogie and carbody. These equations of motion are transformed into a form suitable for numerical differential equation by Runge Kutta method. In the interest of computing economy, certain approximations have been introduced for calculating the creep forces. Sample results are given for a model of a typical railway vehicle used by the Indian Railways. The lateral dynamic response of the railway vehicle carbody for both conventional and unconventional wheelset has been analysed.