Development of a simulation model for dynamic derailment analysis of high-speed trains

Abstract

The running safety of high-speed trains has become a major concern of the current railway research with the rapid development of high-speed railways around the world. The basic safety requirement is to prevent the derailment. The root causes of the dynamic derailment of highspeed trains operating in severe environments are not easy to identify using the field tests or laboratory experiments. Numerical simulation using an advanced train-track interaction model is a highly efficient and low-cost approach to investigate the dynamic derailment behavior and mechanism of high-speed trains. This paper presents a three-dimensional dynamic model of a high-speed train coupled with a ballast track for dynamic derailment analysis. The model considers a train composed of multiple vehicles and the nonlinear inter-vehicle connections. The ballast track model consists of rails, fastenings, sleepers, ballasts, and roadbed, which are modeled by Euler beams, nonlinear spring-damper elements, equivalent ballast bodies, and continuous viscoelastic elements, in which the modal superposition method was used to reduce the order of the partial differential equations of Euler beams. The commonly used derailment safety assessment criteria around the world are embedded in the simulation model. The train-track model was then used to investigate the dynamic derailment responses of a high-speed train passing over a buckled track, in which the derailment mechanism and train running posture during the dynamic derailment process were analyzed in detail. The effects of train and track modelling on dynamic derailment analysis were also discussed. The numerical results indicate that the train and track modelling options have a significant effect on the dynamic derailment analysis. The inter-vehicle impacts and the track flexibility and nonlinearity should be considered in the dynamic derailment simulations.

Study of the post-derailment safety measures on low-speed derailment tests

“…Zhai et al [7] investigated the vibration behaviour of CRH at aped of 350 km/h based on experimental. Ling et al [8] built a three-dimensional dynamic model of a high-speed train coupled with a ballast track to investigate the dynamic derailment behaviours. Wu et al [9,10] proposed a post-derailment device which is similar to the L-shaped guide and validated the effect of the device in half-car derailment experiments.…”

Effect of cement asphalt mortar damage location on dynamic behavior of high-speed track

“…A moving rail support is adopted as a new vehicle-track coupling interface excitation model (called as ''tracking window''). [9][10][11][12] This excitation model is more close to the real moving vehicle under the excitation of the discrete sleepers, and it can save about 30% of computational time compared to the moving vehicle model. The vehicle-track coupling system equations are solved by means of a new explicit integration method.…”

Research on the mechanics of high speed rails

“…In the preceding theme issue on "Current research progress on mechanics of high speed rails" (Acta Mechanica Sinica, 30: 846-909 (2014)), we invited several authors in the field to present their research on high speed rails (HSR), including work on dynamic derailment analysis (Ling et al [1]), load spectra on bogie frame (Zhu et al [2]), high-speed vehicle dynamics model (Ren et al [3]), hunting stability analysis for the safety bound of speeds (Zeng et al [4]), harvest kinetic energy of rail vibration by using piezoelectric circular diaphragm (Wang et al [5]), and welding distortion for double floor structure of high speed train (Dong et al [6]). …”