ABSTRACT
The lateral vibrational problem of rail vehicles is known to be a combined self-excited and randomly forced vibrational problem. This chapter deals with some questions of modelling, further the computing method is outlined and finally some results are given, which were obtained for a special vehicle. Although on modelling prominence was given to a special electric locomotive, a model as general as possible was taken as a basis for the computations, which also is applicable to other four-axled rail vehicles. For their computation the method of creep force saturation was used, which at first starts from the creep forces computed according to the linear KALKER theory. In practice it is most important to have quick and reliable computation methods for complete vehicle models, which do with minimum computing expenses since mostly extensive computations of variants are necessary. The self-excitation becomes manifest in an increasing loss of damping of both kinematical modes of the vehicle with growing running speed.
