TY - JOUR
T1 - A novel methodology to automatically include general track flexibility in railway vehicle dynamic analyses
AU - Costa, Joao
AU - Antunes, P
AU - Pacheco Magalhaes, Hugo
AU - Pombo, Joao
AU - Ambrsio, Jorge
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author expresses his gratitude to the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (Funda??o para a Ci?ncia e a Tecnologia) and the Luso-American Development Foundation (Funda??o Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento) through the grants PD/BD/128138/2016 and project ? 140/2019, respectively. The third author expresses his gratitude to the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the PhD grant SFRH/BD/96695/2013. This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, through IDMEC, under LAETA, project UIDB/50022/2020.
Publisher Copyright:
© IMechE 2020.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - The interaction between the rolling stock and the infrastructure plays a crucial role in railway vehicle dynamics. The standard approach consists of using a multibody formulation to model the railway vehicles running on simplified tracks. The track model can be rigid, if it comprises only a geometric description of the rail; semi-rigid, if it considers an elastic foundation underneath the rail; or a moving track model, if it comprises a track section underneath each wheelset traveling with the same speed of the vehicle. Despite their computational inexpensiveness, these approaches do not provide a complete representation of track flexibility and disregard coupling effects with the vehicle and among the track components. This work proposes a methodology to automatically generate finite element models of railway tracks comprising its relevant flexible components, i.e., rails, pads, fastening systems, sleepers, and ballast or slab. The finite element mesh is generated based on a parametric description of the track that allows an accurate description of its geometry, including curvature, cross-level, grade, and irregularities. The methodology is demonstrated with a case study in which a track with a complex geometry is loaded with two different approaches. The first approach prescribes moving loads, which is a typical approach used to design or analyze the infrastructure. The second approach applies loads retrieved from the dynamic analysis of a complete vehicle. The results show the benefits of this method and reveal that prescribed loading underestimates the forces resulting from the vehicle dynamics, which is an important issue on curved sections.
AB - The interaction between the rolling stock and the infrastructure plays a crucial role in railway vehicle dynamics. The standard approach consists of using a multibody formulation to model the railway vehicles running on simplified tracks. The track model can be rigid, if it comprises only a geometric description of the rail; semi-rigid, if it considers an elastic foundation underneath the rail; or a moving track model, if it comprises a track section underneath each wheelset traveling with the same speed of the vehicle. Despite their computational inexpensiveness, these approaches do not provide a complete representation of track flexibility and disregard coupling effects with the vehicle and among the track components. This work proposes a methodology to automatically generate finite element models of railway tracks comprising its relevant flexible components, i.e., rails, pads, fastening systems, sleepers, and ballast or slab. The finite element mesh is generated based on a parametric description of the track that allows an accurate description of its geometry, including curvature, cross-level, grade, and irregularities. The methodology is demonstrated with a case study in which a track with a complex geometry is loaded with two different approaches. The first approach prescribes moving loads, which is a typical approach used to design or analyze the infrastructure. The second approach applies loads retrieved from the dynamic analysis of a complete vehicle. The results show the benefits of this method and reveal that prescribed loading underestimates the forces resulting from the vehicle dynamics, which is an important issue on curved sections.
KW - Track loading
KW - Vehicle track interaction
KW - Track modelling
KW - Wheel-rail contact
KW - Track geometry
KW - vehicle track interaction
KW - wheel-rail contact
KW - track geometry
KW - track modeling
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85088841658&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0954409720945420
DO - 10.1177/0954409720945420
M3 - Article
VL - 235
SP - 478
EP - 493
JO - Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit
JF - Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit
SN - 0954-4097
IS - 4
ER -