Research progress on train operation safety in Xinjiang railway under wind environment

Abstract

Abstract Railway lines in the Xinjiang wind area face severe wind disasters year-round, which seriously affects the safety and economy of the railway in China. Therefore, the wind characteristics and statistics of wind-induced accidents along the Xinjiang railway lines are presented and the basic research route for evaluating the train running safety under crosswinds and effective measures to improve the windproof performances of trains are proposed, which are meaningful to deal with wind-induced train accidents. Based on this research route, a series of numerical simulations are conducted to evaluate train safety and the corresponding measures are provided. The results show the following. The running safety of the train under crosswinds mainly depends on the aerodynamic loads acting on the train. The relationships between the safe speed limit and train type, the load weight, the embankment height, the road cutting depth, the railway line curve parameters, the yaw angle and other factors are obtained. The critical wind-vehicle speed relationship, as well as the engineering speed limit value under different running conditions, are determined. Large values of the aerodynamic and dynamic indices mainly appear in special locations, such as near earth-embankment-type windbreak walls, shallow cuttings and the transition sections between various types of windbreak walls. Measures such as increasing the height of the earth-embankment-type windbreak walls, adding wind barriers with reasonable heights in shallow cuttings and optimizing the design of different types of transition sections are proposed to significantly improve the safe speed limits of trains under crosswinds.