Experiment Investigation of Constrained Layer Damping Used for Vibration Suppression of Railway Wheel

Abstract

Noise is one of the major factors restricting the development of rail transit. Wheel/rail noise, especially wheel noise is one of the most important sources of rail traffic noise. Wheel noise is usually divided into rolling noise, curve squeal noise and impact noise. The rolling noise occurs on straight rail is considered to be generated by the web coupling vibration caused by the radial excitation of the wheel. In this paper, the axial and radial coupling frequencies of wheels are extracted by modal testing, and the dominant modes in each coupling frequencies are indicated. A constrained layer damping (CLD) ring mounted on the wheel tire is proposed. The principle of the damping ring is to reduce the vibration of the coupled web by reducing the radial vibration of the wheel tread so as to reduce the noise radiation. The experiments not only including the vibration suppression characteristics of the constrained damping ring, but also compares it with the friction damping ring which is widely used nowadays. The data of modal frequency and modal damping ratio are extracted, and the transfer functions of the wheels under the conditions of the constrained layer damping ring, the friction damping ring and the non-installed damping ring are tested. The results show that the constrained layer damping ring can effectively reduce the vibration of wheels in wide frequency domain.