A novel vibration-damping windshield: Dynamic characteristics and benefits for vehicle dynamics performance

Abstract

Conventional windshields passively separate vehicle compartments while offering negligible vibration control. With rising high-speed train demands, suppressing inter-car vibrations becomes critical for improving ride comfort. This study innovatively develops a dual-function vibration-damping windshield that concurrently serves structural and dynamic vibration suppression roles. Employing physically parameterized modeling, the dynamic stiffness and damping characteristics of the vibration-damping windshield were systematically characterized and validated against conventional inter-vehicle dampers, confirming their functional equivalence. A coupled dynamics model was developed through a novel co-simulation framework integrating multibody train dynamics and windshield behavior. The dynamics performance comparison between the traditional and vibration-damping windshields demonstrates that the proposed windshield significantly enhanced secondary suspension isolation. The design effectively attenuates carbody vibrations across all degrees of freedom, while substantially suppressing problematic low-frequency carbody swaying behavior to improve ride stability across operational speeds. Importantly, vibration reduction efficacy proves consistently superior in motor cars relative to trailers. Collectively, this work establishes a paradigm-shifting approach for structural-integrated vibration control, validating the windshield’s capacity to functionally replace dedicated dampers and thereby advance performance integration in next-generation rail vehicles.