Dynamics of a High-Speed Railway Wheelset with Two Time Delays in Primary Suspension Dampers

A two-degree-of-freedom nonlinear high-speed railway wheelset model with two time delays in the lateral and yaw dampers is studied. The aim is to investigate the effect of time delays on stability and Hopf bifurcation characteristics of the wheelset model. The local stability of the trivial equilibrium under different time delay conditions is qualitatively analyzed. Analytical studies reveal that the wheelset model undergoes stability switches with the variation of the time delays. The stability switches correspond to Hopf bifurcations that occur when the time delays cross critical values. Furthermore, properties of Hopf bifurcation including direction and stability of bifurcating limit cycles are studied by using the normal form theory and the center manifold theorem. Our findings indicate that time delays in both lateral dampers and yaw dampers influence the stability and direction of Hopf bifurcation. Additionally, the numerical results show that time delays in the lateral and yaw dampers not only affect the amplitude of the hunting motion of the wheelset but also the periodic and chaotic motions. If the time delays gradually increase, the wheelset will vibrate irregularly with large lateral displacements. The analytical results presented in this paper offer a theoretical reference for the stability design of wheelsets.