Numerical Investigation into the Critical Speed and Frequency of the Hunting Motion in Railway Vehicle System

The critical speed and hunting frequency are two basic research objects of vehicle system dynamics and have a significant influence on the dynamic performance. A lateral dynamic model with 17 degrees of freedom was established in this study to investigate the critical speed and hunting frequency of a high-speed railway vehicle. The nonlinearities of wheel/rail contact geometry, creep forces, and yaw damper were all considered. A heuristic nonlinear creep model was employed to estimate the contact force between the wheel and the rail. The Maxwell model, which covers the influence of the stiffness characteristic, is used to simulate the yaw damper. To reflect the blow-off of the yaw damper, the damping coefficient is described by stages. Based on the mathematical model, the combined effects of vehicle parameters on the critical speed in the straight line and hunting frequency of the wheelset were investigated innovatively. The novel phenomenon that the hunting frequency exhibits a sudden increase from a smaller value to a larger value when the blow-off of the yaw damper occurs was discovered during the calculations. The extents to which various parameters affect the critical speed and hunting frequency are clear on the basis of the numerical results. Moreover, all of the parameter values were divided into three sections to determine the sensitive range for the critical speed and hunting frequency. The results show that the first section of values plays the decisive role on both the critical speed and the hunting frequency for all parameters analyzed. The investigation in this paper enriches the study of hunting stability and gives some ideas to probably solve the abnormal vibrations during the actual operation.