Vibration and sound radiation of a rotating train wheel subject to a vertical harmonic wheel–rail force

The rapid development of high-speed railway networks requires advanced methods for analysing vibration and sound radiation characteristics of a fast rotating train wheel subject to a vertical harmonic wheel–rail force. In order to consider the rotation of the wheel and at the same time increase the computational efficiency, a procedure is adapted in this paper taking advantage of the axial symmetry of the wheel. In this procedure, a recently developed 2.5D finite element method, which can consider wheel rotation but only requires a 2D mesh over a cross section containing the wheel axis, is used to calculate the vibration response of the wheel. Then, the vibration response of the wheel is taken as acoustic boundary condition and the 2.5D acoustic boundary element method, which only requires a 1D mesh over the boundary of the above cross section, is utilised to calculate the sound radiation of the wheel. These 2.5D methods and relevant programs are validated by comparing results from this procedure with those from conventional 3D analyses using commercial software. The comparison also demonstrates that these 2.5D methods have a much higher computational efficiency. Using the 2.5D methods, we study the wheel rotation speed influences on the factors including the vertical receptance of the wheel at wheel–rail contact point, sound pressure level at a pre-defined standard measurement point, radiated sound power level, directivity of the radiation, and contribution of each part of the wheel. It can be concluded that the wheel rotation speed splits most peaks of the vertical receptance at the wheel–rail contact point, sound pressure levels at the field, and the sound power level of the wheel into two peaks. The directivity and power contribution of the wheel are also significantly changed by the wheel rotation speed. Therefore, the rotation of a train wheel should be taken into account when calculating its vibration and sound radiation.

[1]  H. A. Schenck.  Improved Integral Formulation for Acoustic Radiation Problems , 1968 .

[2]  P J Remington.  Wheel/rail noise—Part IV: Rolling noise , 1976 .

[3]  P. J. Remington.  Wheel/rail noise— Part I: Characterization of the wheel/rail dynamic system , 1976 .

[4]  F. J. Rizzo,et al.  A special integral equation formulation for acoustic radiation and scattering for axisymmetric bodies and boundary conditions , 1986 .

[5]  Paul J. Remington,et al.  Wheel/rail rolling noise, I: Theoretical analysis , 1987 .

[6]  Paul J. Remington,et al.  Wheel/rail rolling noise, II: Validation of the theory , 1987 .

[7]  H. Irretier,et al.  Noise generation in railway wheels due to rail-wheel contact forces , 1988 .

[8]  David Thompson.  Predictions of acoustic radiation from vibrating wheels and rails , 1988 .

[9]  D. Thompson.  Wheel-rail Noise Generation, Part I: Introduction And Interaction Model , 1993 .

[10]  Benjamin Soenarko,et al.  A boundary element formulation for radiation of acoustic waves from axisymmetric bodies with arbitrary boundary conditions , 1993 .

[11]  A.H.W.M. Kuijpers,et al.  An improved acoustic Fourier boundary element method formulation using fast Fourier transform integration , 1997 .

[12]  Chris Jones,et al.  A REVIEW OF THE MODELLING OF WHEEL/RAIL NOISE GENERATION , 2000 .

[13]  Chris Jones,et al.  Sound radiation from a vibrating railway wheel , 2002 .

[14]  Martin Ochmann,et al.  Boundary Element Acoustics Fundamentals and Computer Codes , 2002 .

[15]  Kiyoshi Sato,et al.  Acoustic Characteristics of Wheels with Different Web Shapes , 2006 .

[16]  Jianying Fang.  Effect of Train Speed on Acoustic Radiation Characteristics of High-speed Train Wheel Vibration , 2010 .

[17]  Xin Zhou,et al.  The response of a high-speed train wheel to a harmonic wheel-rail force , 2016 .