Performance of Rail Vehicles under Different Track Excitations Based on Inerters

This paper investigates the performance of rail vehicle suspensions with inerters under a combination of three track excitations, which are random irregularity, harmonic and impulsive excitations. A 10 degree-of-freedom vertical dynamic model of a rail vehicle including primary and secondary suspensions is established. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to optimize the parameters of suspensions containing inerters while the optimization goal is to improve the riding comfort. The vertical and pitch acceleration of the vehicle body as well as the wheel-rail contact force are analyzed at the velocities of 20, 30 and 40m/s. Comparison of different suspension layouts is made in both time domain and frequency domain. Result shows that the suspension layout employing inerters has an overall effect on improving riding comfort.