A Multibody System Approach to the Wedge Damper Friction Formulation

Secondary suspension of railway three-piece-trucks hasn’t changed much in the past century. Despite this, its most common damping element, the friction wedge, is not yet fully understood. The frictional damping is a known source of non-linearity and non-smoothness that imposes chaotic behaviors to the system, making the mathematical modeling of such devices a difficult task. The present paper presents a multi-body model of a three-piece-truck’s secondary suspension and the results of its simulations with three types of commonly used friction models.Copyright © 2009 by ASME