ABSTRACT
The first example of a stability analysis of a vehicle in Chapter 1 concerned a rail vehicle wheelset. The idea was to show that conventional railway wheels are tapered and attached to a rigid axle in order to stabilize their motion as they move along a track. The results indicated that properly tapered wheels impart a self-steering effect to wheelsets that is absent for cylindrical wheels. This self-steering effect allows the tapered wheelset to steer itself toward the center of the track if it has become displaced and largely prevents contact between the flanges and the rails. Furthermore, if the wheels have a negative taper angle, the wheelset was shown to be unstable in the sense that any perturbation from a perfectly centered condition will grow until the flanges begin to contact the sides of the rails.
