On the problem of the dynamical reactions of a rolling wheelset to real track irregularities

Abstract

We investigate numerically the dynamical reactions of a moving wheelset model to real measured track irregularities. The background is to examine whether the dynamics are suitable as the input to the inverse problem: determine the true track geometry from measured wheelset dynamical reactions. It is known that the method works well for the vertical position of the rails but the computed lateral position is often flawed. We find that the lateral motion of the wheelset often may differ from the track geometry. The cases are investigated closely but the reasons remain unknown. While the wheelset dynamics reflect the larger (> 4–6 mm) aperiodic track disturbances and single large disturbances quite well, this does not seem to be the case for general smaller or periodic track irregularities or sections behind single large disturbances. The resulting dynamics of a wheelset to lateral track irregularities are in general not sufficiently accurate to be used as the basis for a description of the track irregularities.