Numerical study on the influence of suspended equipments on the ride comfort in high speed railway vehicles

Abstract

To study how the suspended equipments impact the carbody flexible vibrations in railway vehicle and the ride comfort, a rigid flexible general model is required. The numerical simulations rely on three models, derived from the general model - a reference model with no equipment, a simplified model with one equipment mounted at the carbody centre and another model considering four equipments mounted along the carbody. The intent of this paper arises from the observation that the literature review does not feature any study to highlight the change in the ride comfort, exclusively due to the equipments. Similarly, there is no mention on contrasting the ride comfort results obtained from the simplified model versus the ones coming from the model with more equipments. The main characteristics of the flexible vibrations behaviour in the carbody due to the suspended equipments are made visible by comparing the frequency response functions of the carbody between the no equipment and the one equipment models. The influence of the suspended equipments on the ride comfort is established by a contrastive examination of the ride comfort index calculated in the carbody fitted with one/four equipment/s models with the ride comfort index from the no equipment model.