Suppression of Train Wheel Squeal Noise by Shunted Piezoelectric Elements

Application of the piezoelectric patch to mitigate the train wheel squeal is presented in this paper. A complete model for the wheel, rail and foundation is employed in the frequency domain. The wheel squeal model with the shunted piezoelectric element is presented and the consequent added damping is calculated for the critical frequencies. Two different shunt circuits including the resistor ([Formula: see text] and resistor–inductor (RL) are applied and the consequent performances in the noise mitigation are evaluated for different frequencies. The effect of contact point lateral displacement on occurrence of the wheel squeal is investigated. In the parametric study, the effects of shunting circuit and its parameters, size, position and number of piezoelectric elements on the control performance are evaluated. It is found that the resistance shunt circuit has optimal performance when the added damping over a broadband frequency range is implemented. In addition, both the added damping and added damping per piezoelectric volume become saturated by increasing the number of piezoelectric patches further over a specific limiting value.