High frequency railway vehicle-track dynamics through flexible rotating wheelsets

Some railway problems, such as the corrugation of rails or the impact caused by a wheelflat, are associated with a vehicle-track coupled dynamic phenomenon. Models for the analysis of these problems must account for the structural vibrations of the track components (rails and sleepers), but the most adequate approach for the wheelset has not been sufficiently investigated until present. The wheelset can be considered as an undeformable solid, as an elastic structure where the rotation effects are neglected, or as a rotating flexible solid. In order to fill this gap, this article presents a methodology to use the structural vibrations of a rotating wheelset in high-frequency railway dynamics analyses. The model makes use of Eulerian modal coordinates, a formulation that provides very low computational cost. The method is applied in this article to a wheelflat impact calculation and a vehicle running on a corrugated track. The results show the importance of the more realistic model in the simulations, mainly in certain frequencies.