Rotational vibration absorber for the mitigation of rail rutting corrugation

Abstract

Torsional vibrations of metro wheel sets are known to be involved in the wavelength-fixing mechanism of the rutting-type rail corrugation. In the first part of this paper, the basic conditions for this type of wear to appear are established using a theory developed in the frequency domain. The efficiency of a dynamic vibration absorber tuned to the first torsional resonance of the wheel set to mitigate rutting corrugation is evaluated numerically. In the second part, the phenomenon is studied on a quarter-scale test bench. The scaling laws for wheel–roller wear predictions are established. The efficiency of the dynamic vibration absorber is evaluated on the scaled bench. The results are compared with theoretical predictions from a linear model. Additionally, the measurements are compared with numerical results from a multi-body model portraying the experiment.

Keywords:

• rutting corrugation
• dynamic vibration absorber
• scaled test bench
• multi-body model

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Hugues Chollet and the New Technologies Laboratory of INRETS for supplying the test bench and useful comments on this work. This work has been performed within the EU project Wheel–rail corrugation in urban transport – GRD2-2001-5006. The financial support of the European Union is warmly acknowledged. The comments of the reviewers have contributed to improve significantly the quality of the paper and are gratefully acknowledged. Finally we thank Françcois Samyn (D2S International) for his contribution to the numerical study during his MSc thesis.

Notes

Patent Pending (No. 06120344.4-2424).