Vibration modeling and position-dependent analysis of spatial trajectory roller coaster

Abstract

A vibration quarter-carbody model of a roller coaster running on a spatial trajectory is derived based upon the motion parameters, vertical acceleration, angular velocity, angular attitude, and transient position. These motion parameters are acquired from an ADAMS virtual prototype. The vibration response of the carbody is obtained by solving the differential equations with variable coefficients. Besides, the validity of both the ADAMS virtual prototype and the vibration model is verified by the simulated results versus the actually measured ones. Furthermore, a method, called as space frequency characteristics, is proposed to investigate the relation between the carbody vibration and the motion parameter of roller coaster, which reveals that the carbody vibration is related to its transient position and the influence of the randomness of the motion parameters on the vibration is eliminated. This research is supposed to be helpful for the fault diagnosis of roller coaster by considering both the vibration and motion signals.