Ride comfort assessment of high-speed rail vehicles: influence of yaw dampers installation angle

Abstract

High-speed rail vehicles are equipped with yaw dampers to avoid the arising of hunting motion when running at high-speed. Although these suspension components provide a stabilizing effect on the vehicles, they also influence the ride comfort performances by affecting the accelerations perceived by the passengers. In this context, this paper aims to correlate the installation angle on the vertical plane of such suspension components on the ride comfort performances of a generic high-speed train. The proposed methodology is based on multibody simulations of a model with deformable car body. The modal behavior of the model is aligned to the typical mode shapes and natural frequencies reported in literature.