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Abstract

The expression of the centrifugal forces resulting from a flexible body negotiating a curve differs significantly from the expression of the centrifugal forces used in rigid body dynamics. In rigid body railroad vehicle dynamics, the balance speed does not depend on the body inertia; it depends on the vehicle speed, super elevation, track gauge, and gravity constant. This is not, however, the case when the structural flexibility is considered. In this paper, a general multibody system (MBS) approach that accounts for the nonlinear dynamic coupling between the wheel–rail contact forces and the tank car structural flexibility is used to examine the effect of increasing the tank car thickness on the nonlinear dynamics of railroad vehicles. The flexible tank cars are modelled in this investigation using the nonlinear finite element (FE) floating frame of reference (FFR) formulation. The tank car FE model is integrated with a computational railroad vehicle algorithm in which a three-dimensional elastic contact formulation is used to describe the rail–wheel interaction in order to allow for wheel–rail separations. A complete expression for the centrifugal and Coriolis forces is used with triangular shell finite elements to develop the tank car models with different thicknesses. The effect of the coupling between different modes of displacements is examined by comparing the results of the simulations of the flexible and rigid tank car models. A parametric study is performed in order to explain the effect of the thickness increase on the tank car natural frequencies. Furthermore, the effect of increasing the tank car thickness on the critical speed as well as on the nonlinear dynamics of the railroad vehicle during curve negotiation is examined. The FE/FFR formulation allows for accurately capturing the effect of the change of the tank car thickness on the centrifugal and Coriolis inertia forces that define the balance speed during curve negotiations. The analysis presented in this paper shows that there is a strong dynamic coupling between different modes of displacements of the tank car, the plate thickness, and the wheel–rail contact parameters. The effect of increasing the tank car thickness on the wheel wear is also examined in this paper.

Keywords

Flexible tank car multibody systems railroad vehicle dynamics floating frame of reference finite element method wheel–rail contact

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Effect of the tank car thickness on the nonlinear dynamics of railroad vehicles

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