A coupled dynamics model for studying the outer ring fault characteristics and mechanisms of axle-box bearings in urban rail vehicles

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With the rapid and large-scale development of urban rail transit in China, the operational safety of urban rail vehicles is highly concerned. The axle-box bearing, as the core component of vehicle bogies, directly determines the operational safety and quality of vehicles. To ensure the service performance of axle-box bearings, their fault characteristics should be monitored and diagnosed in time. A more realistic and in-depth understanding of fault characteristics is a prerequisite for fault diagnosis. Thus, a double-rows tapered roller bearing (DTRB)-vehicle-track coupled dynamic model was built via the co-simulation in this paper, which comprehensively considers a DTRB model with the localised outer ring raceway fault, as well as the flexibilities of the wheelset, axle-box, and bogie frame. Its correctness and rationality were verified by the theoretical comparison and the field test. The results indicate that the distribution of contact load is consistent with the theoretical value, the fault features of the outer ring raceway can be found in the periodic impulse of the roller-raceway contact load. The slip rates of rolling elements are less than 4.3 %. Compared with the field test, the fault order harmonics in the order spectrum of the simulation are closer to the theoretical fault characteristic order under variable and constant speed conditions, and the maximum error is only 0.37 %. Therefore, the proposed coupled dynamic is correct and can be employed to investigate the fault characteristics of axle-box bearings in urban rail vehicles.