Abstract
Recent years have seen a number of large-scale earthquakes, resulting in the derailment of trains, including the Shinkansen. It has been pointed out that a derailment of a high-speed train can cause extensive damage. However, there are many unknowns regarding the behavior of trains after derailment. Although numerical approaches have been studied in various fields, few analytical methods have been established that include post-derailment. In this study, an analytical method that can evaluate the post-derailment behavior of a stopped vehicle during an earthquake is developed as a basic study to establish an analytical method that can represent a series of train behavior before and after derailment. This proposed method combines a dynamic model of a railway vehicle based on multibody dynamics theory, with a finite element model to represent the contact between vehicle and track components, such as wheel/rail contact. The proposed method enables the representation of a series of behavior of a stopped vehicle before and after derailment, while taking into account the contact between complex three-dimensional geometries such as wheel/rail. The proposed method has been verified by comparing the time history waveforms of vehicle behavior and the derailment safety limit line for sinusoidal excitation with the results of an existing vehicle motion simulation program whose accuracy has been verified.
