Hunting Stability of High-Speed Railway Vehicles Under Steady Aerodynamic Loads

With the rising speed of high-speed trains, the aerodynamic loads become more significant and their influences on the hunting stability of railway vehicles deserve to be considered. Such an effect cannot be properly considered by the conventional model of hunting stability analysis. To this end, the linear hunting stability of high-speed railway vehicles running on tangent tracks is studied. A model considering the steady aerodynamic loads due to the joint action of the airflow facing the moving train and the crosswind, is proposed for the hunting stability analysis of a railway vehicle with 17 degrees of freedom (DOF). The key factors considered include: variations of the wheel–rail normal forces, creep coefficients, gravitational stiffness and angular stiffness due to the actions of the aerodynamic load, which affects the characteristics of hunting stability. Using the computer program developed, numerical calculations were carried out for studying the behavior of the linear hunting stability of vehicles under steady aerodynamic loads. The results show that the aerodynamic loads have an obvious effect on the linear critical speeds and instability modes. The linear critical speed decreases monotonously as the crosswind velocity increases, and the influences of pitch moment and lift force on the linear critical speed are larger than the other components of the aerodynamic loads.