Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of Vehicle-Bridge Interaction considering the Hertzian Contact Spring and Rail Irregularities

In this paper, the nonlinear dynamic response of Vehicle-Bridge interaction with the coupled equations of motion including nonlinear Hertzian contact is presented. The moving train model is chosen to have 10 degrees of freedom (DOF). The bridge is modeled as 2D Euler-Bernoulli beam element with 4 DOF for each element, two for rotations and another two for translations. The nonlinear Hertzian contact is used to simulate the interaction between vehicle and bridge. Base on the relationship of wheel displacement of the vehicle and the vertical displacement of the bridge in Hertzian contact, the coupled equations of motion of the whole system is derived. The convenient formulation was encoded into a computer program. The contact forces, contact area and stress of the rail surface were also computed. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed program are verified and compared with exact analytical solution and other previous studies. Various numerical examples and parametric studies have demonstrated the versatility and applicability of the proposed program.