Verification of static analysis on railway vehicle overturning under crosswind

Abstract

In order to verify the validity of "the Detailed Equation" which is a method of static analysis on railway vehicle overturning, we conducted a full scale experiment. The Detailed Equation is an equation of the equilibrium of the forces that act on a railway vehicle, which is similar to an equation for solving the overturning problem of a rigid body, but the external forces and the displacement of the car body are taken into account in detail. Strong crosswind is an important problem for securing the safety of railway vehicles. "The critical wind speed of overturning" or "The wheel unloading ratio" is one of the indices to evaluate the safety of railway vehicles under strong crosswind, and can be obtained by the Detailed Equation. Thus we need to verify the validity of the Detailed Equation. In the full scale experiment, we loaded lateral force (assumed to be crosswind) on the test vehicle, and examined the behavior of the vehicle, such as displacement of the car body and variation of wheel load. As a result, the Detailed Equation has been verified to be valid when we use it for evaluating the critical wind speed of overturning or the wheel unloading ratio.