Investigation of ride properties of a rail vehicle with wheel defects

Abstract

During rail vehicles operation it becomes, that wheel irregularities are generated on the rolling surface, which many times eventuate in serious defects on wheels. A rail vehicle running with such wheel defects is related on one hand with the defective quality of a ride comfort for passenger (in case of passenger wagons) or eventually with damage of transported goods (in case of goods wagons) and on the other hand with a ride safety and tracks damages. The profile of a defective wheel surface is no longer circular, but it gets irregular shape, which can be awfully different from original one. It comes to this that the forces ratio in wheel/rail contact can be such unfavorably changed, that the probability of the derailment risk comes to be very serious. Because of introduced reason there is necessary to investigate this phenomena in advance. Therefore the goal of this paper is to investigate, how wheel defects of a rail vehicle can affect its ride properties. Research was performed by means of computations in the multibody software in order to evaluate same important parameters characterizing dynamic properties of an investigated rail vehicle.