ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: This paper presents an investigation on the effect of hanging sleepers on wheel/rail dynamic interaction in heavy-haul railway on the basis of the vehicle-track coupled dynamics model which includes a freight subsystem with double suspension systems and the track subsystem with completely and incompletely hanging sleepers. The influences of running speed and the number and gap of hanging sleepers on the wheel/rail dynamic performances are compared under the conditions of completely and incompletely hanging sleepers. Results show that the continuity of the track structure is destroyed by the hanging sleepers, resulting in the increasing of the wheel/rail interaction. Especially in the condition of completely hanging sleepers, there are significant increases of the wheel/rail interaction with the increases of the running speed and the number of hanging sleepers. The dynamic characteristics of the track structure are also affected obviously by the hanging sleepers.
