Modelling of Railway Vehicle Dynamics: A Multi Body Analytical Approach

Supervisor: Prof. Nalinash S. Vyas
Project Report

• Worked as a Student Research Associate at Mission Lab, IIT Kanpur
• Lateral Dynamics - With given track – wheel geometry, contact patch co-ordinates were determined as a function of lateral perturbation by solving the kinematic equations. With geometry as input, equations of motion were solved iteratively on MATLAB to get forces at each time step and further estimate critical speed of stability
• Longitudinal Dynamics – Observed the response characteristics of the model of a railway coupler by varying source frequency, spring stiffness, draft gear friction and coupler slack
• Software Modelling – Developed a model of rail-wheel pair in Simpack, and observed the motion in a straight track, by varying the wheel positions
• Created a geometric model of a single wheelset model with track, bolster for verification of wheelset kinematics
• Performed the eigenvalue stability analysis of a 2-wheelset model connected to a frame
• Imparted uncertainties like camber, yaw and toe in to the wheelset and used Simpack Post to visualise its motion behaviour
• A curved track was made and the motion behaviour of wheelset was observed. This was done so as to see how the wheelset negotiates a radius of curvature.
• A beam with moving load was modelled in ANSYS APDL to see the motion behaviour of the rail track when the train is running on it.