On the Crosswind Stability of High Speed Railway Vehicles

The crosswind stability against overturning is a major design criterium for high speed railway vehicles. Due to the increasing interoperability in Europe it has also become an important international task. In recent years efforts have been made to derive an uniform rule in certifying railway vehicles. In this case especially probabilistic methods have been proposed These probabilistic techniques are common design criteria for wind turbines. A sophisticated method to compute the reliability of railway vehicles under strong crosswind is presented. In consideration of the given gust signal and the high-frequency turbulent fluctuations of the wind the response of a simplified train model is computed. The major failure criterion to determine the reliability is the lowest wheel-rail contact force of the railway vehicle. Special attention is given to the stochastic modeling of the high-frequency turbulent fluctuations of the wind and to the effect of these fluctuations on the crosswind stability.