Dynamic Investigation of the Hunting Motion of a Railway Bogie in a Curved Track via Bifurcation Analysis

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare the Hopf bifurcation behavior of a two-axle railway bogie and a dual wheelset in the presence of nonlinearities, which are yaw damping forces in the longitudinal suspension system and heuristic creep model of the wheel-rail contact including dead-zone clearance, while running on a curved track. Two-axle railway bogie and dual wheelset were modeled using 12-DOF and 8-DOF system with considering lateral, vertical, roll, and yaw motions. By utilizing Lyapunov’s indirect method, the critical hunting speeds related to these models are evaluated as track radius changes. Hunting defined as the lateral vibration of the wheelset with a large domain was characterized by a limit cycle-type oscillation behavior. Influence of the curved track radius on the lateral displacement of the leading wheelset was also investigated through 2D bifurcation diagram, which is employed in the design of a stable model. Frequency power spectra at critical speeds, which are related to the subcritical and supercritical bifurcations, were represented by comparing the two-axle bogie and dual wheelset model. The evaluated accuracy to predict the critical hunting speed is higher and the hunting frequency in unstable region is lower compared to the dual wheelset model.