HOPF BIFURCATION AND NONLINEAR OSCILLATIONS IN RAILWAY VEHICLE SYSTEMS

Hopf bifurcations and nonlinear oscillations for a railway passenger car are studied in this article. The vehicle is considered as a multi-rigid-body system with 17 degrees of freedom. During the wheel/rail impact when the wheelset lateral displacement is greater than the wheel flange clearance, the vehicle/track coupling mode is considered. The rail is modelled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam extended to infinity and discretely supported by sleepers. The lateral and torsional vibration of the rail is taken into account. Two propositions for searching the Hopf bifurcation point of the system are given. Then linear and nonlinear critical speeds of the vehicle system with different primary suspension stiffness, periodic solutions and chaos in the system are investigated. For the covering abstract see ITRD E117109.