NONLINEAR DYNAMIC RESPONSES OF LOCOMOTIVE EXCITED BY RAIL CORRUGATION AND GEAR TIME-VARYING MESH STIFFNESS

Rail corrugation is usually generated in modern railway transportations, such as high-speed railway, urban railway, and heavy-haul railway. It is one of the major excitations to the wheel–rail dynamic interaction, which will cause extra vibration and noise, failures, or even risk of derailment to the vehicle and its components. A dynamics model of a heavy-haul locomotive considering the traction power from the electric motor to the wheelset through gear transmission is employed to investigate the nonlinear dynamic responses of the locomotive. This dynamics model couples the motions of the vehicle, the track, and the gear transmission together. In this dynamics model, excitations from the rail corrugation, the nonlinear wheel–rail contact, the time-varying mesh stiffness, and the nonlinear gear backlash are considered. Then, numerical simulations are performed to reveal the dynamic responses of the locomotive. The calculated results indicate that different nonlinear phenomenon can be observed under the excitation of the rail corrugation with different amplitude and wavelength. The high frequency vibrations excited by the time-varying mesh stiffness are usually modulated by the low frequency vibrations caused by the rail corrugation. However, this is likely to vanish under the chaotic conditions with some corrugation wavelength. The vibration level of the vehicle and the gear transmission increases generally with the corrugation amplitude. However, some corrugation lengths have been found to be more responsible for the vibration of the dynamics system, which should be concerned greatly during the locomotive operation. Meanwhile, involvement of gear transmission systems will cause different dynamic responses between the wheelsets under rail corrugation and gear mesh excitations.