Optimisation of an inter-vehicle damper for a high-speed train

There are excessive inter-car lateral vibrations of the current Chinese CRH1 high-speed train, so it is meaningful to improve the high-speed train dynamics by optimising its inter-vehicle suspension. Multi-body system (MBS) dynamics modelling of CRH1 high-speed train with inter-vehicle suspension was first performed in this study, then the MBS model was used to analyse the influential mechanism and the quantitative effects of inter-vehicle damper parameters on vehicle system dynamics, the design of experiment (DOE) approach was finally applied to optimise the inter-vehicle damper parameters. Simulation results showed that after the optimisation, there was a significant reduction in the inter-car lateral accelerations of CRH1 with a maximum rate of 20.1%, in addition, the severe lateral shock and oscillation, especially car roll acceleration, that are induced by aerodynamics when two high-speed trains pass each other were significantly suppressed with a maximum rate of 25%. Thus, the developed MBS model and the obtained optimisation result provide the basis for an engineering solution of the problem of excessive inter-car lateral vibrations of CRH1, the obtained knowledge of inter-vehicle damper parameter effects on high-speed train dynamics are valuable in the context of development of inter-vehicle suspensions for high-speed trains.