THE STUDY OF TRACK GAUGE INFLUENCE ON LATERAL STABILITY OF 4-AXLE RAIL VEHICLE MODEL

Abstract

Analysis of lateral stability of rail vehicle model is the subject of present paper. The method used by the author is based on bifurcation diagrams creation and analysis. The continued study of stability of vehicle model in straight track and curved track and form of the results presentation are original features of the method. Results for the straight track and wide range of radii of the curved track are presented jointly on the combined bifurcation diagrams in this paper. Multibody dynamics software VI-Rail was used for numerical analysis. Passenger vehicle model and track models were created. Analysis of track gauge influence on vehicle model stability is main aim of this paper. But analysis of possibility to adopt the method worked out earlier to the newly used numerical code and model of 4-axle vehicle is the aim either.

Keywords

• numerical simulation
• rail vehicle non-linear stability
• critical velocity
• track gauge.