ABSTRACT
The vertical dynamic behaviour of a railway vehicle with flexible wheels is compared to that of a vehicle with standard solid wheels. Full-scale field experiments performed on a portion of a recently built railway track for high-speed trains are reported. Flexible and solid wheels without and with wheel flats were instrumented for measurement of transient vertical wheel/rail contact forces. Accelerations and strains in the track structure were measured in parallel. The location of the instrumented wheelset in relation to the instrumented portion of the track was determined at each instant of time. Flexible wheels are shown to considerably reduce the contact forces.
A linear mathematical model of the track is suggested based on a previously reported technique for solving vertical interaction problems. Track parameters determined at the test-site are used as input to the model. Numerical results show acceptable agreement with measured responses.
