On effects of track random irregularities on random vibrations of vehicle–track interactions

Abstract As the integrated reflection of track substructure deformations and the most important excitation for vehicle–track interactions, track irregularities show random nature, and generally being regarded as weak stationary random processes. To better expose the full statistical characteristics of track random irregularities on amplitude and wavelength, a time–frequency transform and probability theory based model is developed to simulate representative and realistic track irregularity sets by combining with random sampling methods. Moreover, a three-dimensional (3-D) vehicle–track coupled model is established by finite element method and dynamic equilibrium equations, where the nonlinearity of wheel/rail interaction is considered. Finally, a probability density evolution method (PDEM) is introduced to solve the probabilistic transmission issues between track irregularity sets and dynamic responses of vehicle–track coupled systems. There is a clear demonstration that the results derived by proposed methods are comparable to the experimental measurements. Through effectively applying the above methodologies, the probabilistic and random characteristics of vehicle–track interaction can be properly revealed.