A Detailed Model for Investigating Vertical Interaction between Railway Vehicle and Track

SUMMARYA new detailed model is developed to investigate the vertical interactions between railway vehicles and tracks. The model consists of two subsystems of vehicle and track in which the vehicle subsystem is modelled as a multi-body system with 10 DOFs running on the track with a constant velocity, and the track substructure as an infinite Euler beam supported on a discrete-continuous elastic foundation consisting of the three layers of rail, sleeper, and ballast. The interface between these two subsystems is the wheel / rail interaction described by Hertzian nonlinear elastic contact theory. In order to get numerical results of such a complex system, a new simple fast integration method is adopted. And typical numerical results are compared with field measured data to verify the detailed model. Finally, the model is applied to analysing the wheel / rail dynamic interactions in high-speed rail and in heavy haul railway.