Identification of the Running-State of Railway Wheelsets

Abstract

This contribution deals with the identification of the running-state of railway wheelsets by means of accelerations measured at the axle-boxes. The interaction between rail and wheel causes rigid-body motions as well as structural vibrations. First of all accelerations are decomposed into their symmetric and antimetric components, followed by a time frequency analysis using the short-time Fourier transform. Simulations and experiments on a full-scale test rig underline the potentials of this approach for the identification of the wheelset's bending modes. The torsional modes cannot be directly observed at the axle-boxes, they have to be estimated by the dynamic interaction between the wheelset's yawing and lateral motion.