In order to enhance the efficiency of railway transportation, Chinese Railways has decided to raise the speed of trains on the existing railway main lines. A theoretical model and the corresponding simulation software, VICT, based on the vehicle-track coupling dynamics are employed to analyse dynamic effects of trains on track structures caused by raising train speeds. Chinese passenger cars and freight cars running on the lines where speed has been raised were chosen for investigation. It is shown that raising train speeds on the existing railway lines obviously intensifies the dynamic effects of vehicles on tracks, especially in the turnouts, in the welded rail joints, and in the sections of bridge-subgrade connections. The occurrence of wheel flats becomes more general after raising train speeds. An unfavourable peak of dynamic effects of wheel flats on tracks is observed in the speed range from 140 to 160 km/h, which is just the region of running speeds for passenger trains after the increase in the speed. Some basic countermeasures, including stricter maintenance standards for the speed-raised railways, are proposed to solve these problems, on the basis of dynamic analysis.

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Large magnitude impact loads caused by wheel flats may excite various vibration modes of wheelsets employed in high-speed trains and thereby contribute considerably to the dynamic response of vehicles. In this study, the wheelset is modeled as a flexible body using the modal approach, which is integrated to a multibody dynamic model of the high-speed train coupled with a flexible track slab model. The multibody dynamic model is formulated for a typical high-speed train consisting of a car body, two bogie frames, and four wheelsets. The track is modeled considering the rail as a Timoshenko beam discretely supported on a flexible track slab. The effects of the wheelset flexibility on the dynamic response are illustrated through comparisons with those obtained with a rigid wheelset considering different vehicle speeds and sizes of the wheel flat. Subsequently, the effects of wheel flats on the vehicle–track system are evaluated in terms of the wheel–rail impact forces, axle-box vertical acceleration, and dynamic stress developed in the wheelset due to a haversine wheel flat. The results suggest that the wheelset flexibility can lead to significantly higher axle-box vibration and wheelset axle stress compared to a rigid wheelset in the presence of a wheel flat.