Effect of Disabled Fastening Systems and Ballast on Vehicle Derailment

The effect of disabled fastening systems and ballast on railway vehicle derailment is investigated by developing a nonsymmetrical coupled vehicle/track model. In the model a half passenger car is considered, and modeled with a multi-body system with 18 degrees of freedom, which runs on a tangent track at a constant speed. The tangent track is modeled as two elastic beams by discrete nonsymmetrical supporters modeling fastening systems, sleepers, and ballasts. The normal contact forces between wheels and rails are described by Hertzian elastic contact theory, and the tangential forces by the nonlinear creep theory of Shen et al. (Proceedings of the 8th IAVSD Symposium, Cambridge, MA, pp. 591–605). In the numerical analysis, the disabled rail fastening, rail pad, and ballast, on one and two sides of the track are, respectively, considered. Through a detailed analysis, derailment coefficients and the track state variations are obtained. The derailment coefficients are defined as the ratio of the lateral force to the vertical force of the wheel and rail (indicated by L∕V), duration of L∕V, and rate of the wheel load reduction (indicated by ΔV∕V), respectively. The variations of the contact points on the wheel treads, the track gauge, the track cross-level, and rail turnover angle are present in the paper. The numerical results obtained indicate that the failure of rail supports has a great influence on the vehicle running safety.