Stochastic failure process of railway vehicle dampers and the effects on suspension and vehicle dynamics

Abstract

Railway vehicle dampers undergo degradation and failure after long-term service. Bench tests in this paper indicate a stochastic failure process, in which damping characteristics follow bimodal random distributions between normal and failure; failure probability increases in the ageing process until it becomes deterministic. This failure mode may be neglected due to the probabilistic absence of failure, which poses great risk to reliability. Then, nonlinear suspension dynamics with stochastic failure is modelled; Itô stochastic differential rule and cumulant-neglect closure are adopted to derive moment equations. The scheme of progressive iteration is proposed to obtain fast-convergent and stable solutions for analysing the effect of stochastic failure process on vibration response. Further, numerical simulation of a vehicle with stochastic failure is performed for failure effects analysis on dynamical performance. The results demonstrate that the deterioration of failure probability and damping reduction amplitude leads to larger vibrations. The stochastic failure of secondary lateral damper and anti-yaw damper is harmful for lateral vehicle dynamics, while that of secondary vertical damper has negative effects on vertical ride quality. It is of great importance to pay full attention to the stochastic failure process of dampers for reliability and security of railway vehicles.