Study of the lateral stability of railroad vehicle systems using the elastic contact

Abstract EN

Railroad vehicles can experience severe lateral and yaw oscillations at a certain speed known as the critical speed.

Determining this critical speed is important in order to identify the operation conditions of railroad vehicles.

One of the most commonly used methods to determine the critical speeds of railroad vehicles is the linear theory.

In this paper, an investigation of the lateral stability of railroad vehicles using a general multibody code is presented.

Two methods for solving the problem of the contact between the wheel and the rail are employed.

In the first method, a constraint contact approach is used, while in the second method, an elastic force model is used.

The results obtained using the general multibody code are compared with and verified using the results of the linear theory.