Abstract
Most of the bogies used for LRT have independently rotating wheels (IRW) so that the floor of the passenger compartment can be lower. IRW, however, do not have a sufficient ability to self-steer, and generate large lateral forces in curved sections of track. The EEF (a German acronym for Single-wheel Single-running-gear) bogie, on the other hand, has IRW that have the self-steering ability. The nonlinear profile of the wheels creates the gravity stiffness that gives them their self-steering ability. In this paper, a multibody dynamics model of the vehicle is developed, and a numerical simulation is conducted. Experiments with a 1/10 scale model vehicle has also been developed. From these results, a design method for the self-steering mechanism of a railway bogie, considering the nonlinear effects of linkage arrangement, is proposed.
