Vibration Analysis of a Railway Carbody Model as a Non-Circular Cylindrical Shell

Railway carbody is modeled as a non-circular cylindrical shell with simply-supported ends in this paper. The shell model doesn’t have end plates of the carbody and other equipments attached to actual carbody are neglected. We have applied the transfer matrix method (TMM) to the analysis of three-dimensional elastic vibration problems on the carbody. We also made a 1/12 size carbody model for experimental studies to verify the validity of the numerical simulation. The model has end plates and was placed on soft sponge at both ends of the model to emulate the freely-support. The modal analysis was applied to the experimental model, and natural frequencies and mode shapes of vibration were measured. Comparing the results by TMM and the experiment, natural frequencies and mode shapes of vibration for lower modes show good agreement each other in spite of differences of boundary conditions.Copyright © 2007 by ASME