2011 Volume 5 Issue 3 Pages 450-460
It is the objective of this investigation to discuss effects of using table-update and table-interpolation algorithms on the accuracy of the analysis of vehicle/turnout interactions. To this end, contact geometry analysis procedure is generalized for turnout simulations such that tongue rail profiles available from measurement and/or drawing can be automatically interpolated and used for producing multiple look-up contact tables. Having obtained multiple look-up contact tables, the wheelset trajectory coordinate is used to locate the nearest look-up contact tables to be interpolated for determining the location of contact point at every time-step in the dynamic analysis. The effects of the number of multiple contact tables on the accuracy of predicting the location of contact points are investigated. This leads to an important insight into the choice of intervals between the contact tables being generated. It is demonstrated that undesirable discontinuous changes in contact points inevitable for the table-update algorithm can be reduced using the table-interpolation algorithm.
