Numerical Simulation for Railway Vehicle Behavior during Earthquakes Considering the Change in the Direction of Springs and Dampers due to the Rotational Motion of the Vehicle

Abstract

The authors are researching with the aim of establishing a numerical analysis method capable of evaluating vehicle behavior up to after the derailment of a vehicle during earthquakes. In this paper, to develop the analysis method, we proposed a method to sequentially update the characteristic directions of primary and secondary suspensions in accordance with the rotational motion of the vehicle. Furthermore, we use the proposed method to study the influence of the rotation of these suspensions by sinusoidal excitation. The result shows that the influence on the derailment limit is not significant.