Abstract
Lightweight railway vehicle carbodies have complex flexural vibration characteristics. Simple structure model is necessary to investigate the vibration characteristics of the carbody. The transfer matrix method is used to analyze bending vibrations of the railway vehicle carbody. The carbody is modeled as a simply-supported cylindrical shell without end plates. The cylindrical shell consists of several cylindrical panels that are uniform in the axial direction. Effects of each panel property on the vibration are numerically investigated in detail and the effect of the end plates are also discussed by comparing with the results of finite element analysis.
