An investigation into the influence of wheel–rail contact relationships on the carbody hunting stability of an electric locomotive

Abstract

Carbody hunting stability has attracted more and more attention due to its great influence on the dynamic performance of a railway vehicle. To fully understand the correlation between the wheel–rail contact relationship and the carbody hunting stability of an electric locomotive, the wheel–rail contact geometry analysis and the multi-body dynamics simulation are carried out in this work. The focus is on the influences of track parameters (including rail profile, rail cant and track gauge) on wheel–rail contact relationships and carbody hunting stability. A group of rail profiles are obtained by interpolating between the standard CHN60 profile and the worn rail profiles. The nominal equivalent conicity, the effective equivalent conicity and the wheel–rail contact bandwidth for a wheelset lateral displacement of ±6 mm are used to evaluate the wheel–rail contact relationship, while the lateral continuous comfort index is used to evaluate the carbody hunting stability. The simulation results show that keeping the rail cant at about 1/40 and reducing the track gauge and the wear depth at the gauge corner of rail can improve the carbody hunting stability of the electric locomotive. Furthermore, the effective equivalent conicity is a good choice to establish the relationship between the wheel–rail contact geometry and the carbody hunting stability.