Assessment of derailment risk in railway turnouts through quasi-static analysis and dynamic simulation

Abstract

Train derailments in railway switches are becoming more and more common, which have caused serious casualties and economic losses. Most previous studies ignored the derailment mechanism when vehicles pass through the turnout. With this consideration, this work aims to research the 3D derailment coefficient limit and passing performance in turnouts through the quasi-static analysis and multi-body dynamic simulation. The proposed derailment criteria have considered the influence of creep force and wheelset yaw angle. Results show that there are two derailing stages in switch panel, which are climbing the switch rail and stock rail, respectively. The 3D derailment coefficient limit at the region of top width 5 mm to 20 mm is much lower than the main track rail, which shows that wheels are more likely to derail in this area. The curve radius before the switch rail is suggested to be set as 350 m. When the curve radius before turnout is 65 m, the length of the straight line between the curve and turnout needs to be larger than 3 m. This work can provide a good understanding of the derailment limit and give guidance to set safety criteria when vehicles pass through the turnout.

Evaluation of dynamic derailment in a railway switch considering the longitudinal impacts caused by vehicle retarder

“…In this way, wheel-rail creep force and yaw angle can be considered in the model, avoiding the conservative solution of the traditional Nadal criterion. 36 Where ψ represents the yaw angle of the wheelset, α denotes the wheel-rail contact angle, and N is the normal force.…”

“…In this way, wheel-rail creep force and yaw angle can be considered in the model, avoiding the conservative solution of the traditional Nadal criterion. 36 …”

Numerical and experimental investigation on parameters determination of the suspension system for a high-speed train aiming at cross-line operation

“…[7][8][9] When a train passes through a small-radius curved track, severe lateral interaction of wheel-rail contact occurs, and the safety risk of the train increases. [10][11][12][13] Dynamics performance indices related to suspension parameter analysis can be classified into three categories: stability, ride comfort, and safety. The suspension parameter analysis searches for a compromised scheme while considering various indices of dynamics performance, 14 such as lateral stability, curving performance, and ride comfort.…”

Influence of rail weld irregularity on dynamic stress of bogie frame based on vehicle-track rigid-flexible coupled model

“…The performance of wheel-rail interaction acts as the most important excitation source including wheel out-of-roundness (OOR) (Tao et al, 2021; Zhai et al, 2020), wheel flat (Ling et al, 2015; Ren, 2019), rail corrugation (Wu et al, 2021) as well as rail weld irregularities (Wen et al, 2009). Besides when a vehicle passes through the switches and crossings (S&C, turnout) (Bezin et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2021) or voided sleeper, the dynamic wheel-rail contact force will increase and lead to the vehicle’s derailment. Many researchers have developed various kinds of track models (Pålsson et al, 2021; Sun et al, 2022) to study the influence of turnout and the wear mechanism between the wheel/rail contact (Kisilowski and Kowalik, 2021; Milosevic et al, 2022).…”