Effect of conicity on lateral dynamic characteristics of railway vehicle through scaled wheelset model development

A major issue affecting the stability and safety of railway vehicles is the contact force between the wheel and the rail. The conicity of the wheel is a main factor influencing the contact force. Therefore, in this study, the effect of the conicity of the wheel on the vehicle’s drive dynamic characteristics was experimentally demonstrated by developing a scaled wheelset model. In the scaled model, a new bearing section was designed to measure the lateral force and thus understand the lateral dynamic characteristics of the wheelset. Experiments were conducted with four different conicities of the wheel. The new creep model was derived from the creep curve, and the critical speed of the vehicle was calculated by applying the creep model to the two-DOF wheelset numerical model on the basis of the measured results. The relationship between the conicity and the critical speed was verified through the creep curves, and a direction of the conicity of the wheel is proposed to increase the critical speed of vehicles.