Dynamic Behavior of a Railway Track Under a Moving Wheel Load Modelled as a Sinusoidal Pulse

TL;DR

This paper models the dynamic response of railway tracks under a moving sinusoidal pulse load to better understand the loads on the substructure, comparing different numerical methods for solving the equations of motion.

Contribution

It introduces a sinusoidal pulse load model for train/track interaction and compares numerical solutions to evaluate its effectiveness.

Findings

The sinusoidal pulse model captures realistic load impacts.

Different numerical methods yield comparable results.

The model helps assess substructure load characteristics.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the train/track induced loads on the substructure by modelling the wheel, at each instant, as a moving sinusoidal pulse applied in a very short period of time. This assumption has the advantage of being more realistic as it reduces the impact of time on the load definition. To that end, mass, stiffness, and dumping matrices of an elementary section of track will be determined. As a result, the equations of motion of a section of track subjected to a sinusoidal pulse and a rectangular pulse respectively is concluded. Two numerical methods of resolution of that equation, depending on the nature of the dumping matrix, will be presented. The computation results will be compared in order to conclude about the relevance of that load model. This approach is used in order to assess the nature and the value of the loads received by the substructure.