Modeling and nonlinear hunting stability analysis of high-speed railway vehicle moving on curved tracks

A heuristic nonlinear creep model is used to derive the nonlinear coupled differential equations of motion of a high-speed railway vehicle traveling on a curved track. The vehicle dynamics are modeled using a 21 degree-of-freedom (21-DOF) system which takes account of the lateral displacement and yaw angle of each wheelset, the lateral displacement, vertical displacement, roll angle and yaw angle of the truck frames, and the lateral displacement, vertical displacement, roll angle, pitch angle and yaw angle of the car body. To analyze the respective effects of the major system parameters on the vehicle dynamics, the 21-DOF system is reduced to 20-DOF, 14-DOF and 6-DOF models, respectively, by excluding designated subsets of the system parameters. The validity of the analytical models and the numerical solution procedure is confirmed by comparing the result obtained using the 6-DOF model for the critical velocity of a railway vehicle traveling on a tangent track with the solution presented in the literature. In general, the results obtained in this study show that the critical hunting speed derived using the 6-DOF or 14-DOF model is generally higher than that evaluated using the 20-DOF model. In addition, the critical hunting speed evaluated via the heuristic nonlinear creep model is lower than that derived using a linear creep model.