Railcar Dynamic Response during Braking Maneuvers Based on Frequency Analysis

The dynamic response of a vehicle during braking is influenced by the tangential forces developed at the wheel-rail’s contact surface. The friction coefficient affects the load transfer from the wheel’s tread to the vehicle. In this work, the vibrations of a scale-down railway vehicle are monitored during braking and their relationship with the friction coefficient between wheel and rail is found out. The vehicle is instrumented with encoders, accelerometers, and is controlled via Bluetooth. The tests are carried out with clean and friction-modified rails. The tangential forces transmitted from the wheel to the railcar’s body are visualized in time and frequency using a proposed correlation algorithm based on the outputs of the Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). The results demonstrate that tangential forces have a significant impact on railway vehicles under conditions of high friction coefficients and large creep values.