Impact of Rail Fastener Looseness on Vertical Dynamic Responses of High-Speed Vehicle and Ballastless Track

The fastener system is an essential component of the high-speed ballastless track system. A detailed analysis for the effect of fastener looseness on the vertical dynamic response of the vehicle–track coupling system is conducted from the time domain, frequency domain and time–frequency domain in this paper. A fine fastener system model is employed, which includes two spring rods and one rail pad. The preloaded force is proposed to simulate the defect of the fastener, and a looseness coefficient is defined to represent the loose degree of the fastener. First, three fastener system models are introduced into the model, respectively, and the difference in the vehicle–track dynamic is analyzed and compared. The results show that the proposed model is more consistent with the real situation and more suitable to simulate fastener defects. Then, the detailed analysis of vehicle and track dynamic responses is explored in the case of different degrees of loose fasteners and the case of completely loose fasteners. According to the simulation results, there is little impact on the dynamic response of the vehicle–track system when the looseness coefficient is less than 0.9. When the fasteners are completely loosened, the dynamic response of the wheelset and the rail significantly increases. The vibration responses of rail and wheelset enhance with the increase of the number of the completely loose fastener. The loose fasteners affect the low-frequency part of the wheelset vibration response and the high-frequency part of the rail vibration response. Finally, a time–frequency analysis method is used to analyze the system vibration response under the combined effect of the completely loose fastener and the track irregularity. The track irregularity still dominates the excitation of the system, and the vibration response of the wheelset and the rail is more sensitive to the fastener defect at low speed.