Nonlinear kinematic oscillations of railway wheelsets of general surface geometry

Kinematic oscillation of railway wheelsets is investigated in the case of a straight track, focusing on the nonlinear effects of the geometry of wheel and rail profiles. Euler angles are used to describe the motion of the wheelset, the contacting bodies are modelled by two-parametric rigid surfaces. The surface parameters of the current contact points are followed during the calculations. The curvatures and their variations are also included in the analysis. From the implicit form of the geometric constraints, the dynamics is determined by means of Taylor expansion. Equations of the local nonlinear motion are derived and the qualitative behaviour of the system is given. (© 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)