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Description
Railway vehicle hunting motion is associated with lateral and yaw oscillations of the wheelset on the rails, induced by the conical shape of the wheel tread.During this motion, the wheel-rail contact moves laterally on the wheel tread and rail head, affecting the dynamics of both structures. This study investigates the influence of the lateral contact position on wheel and rail vibrations and sound radiation. 3D Finite Element (FE) models of the track and wheelset are combined with 3D Boundary Element (BE) models for noise radiation, coupled by an analytical wheel-rail interaction model. This framework is used to assess the effect of changing the lateral contact position on the wheel and track responses. The contact is shifted laterally by approximately ±1 cm from the nominal positions on the rail head and wheel tread. The results show that the lateral contact position has a clear influence on the dynamic and acoustic responses. On a structural vibration level, the lateral shift changes the coupling between vertical and lateral vibration components, thus affecting the simulated mobilities and contact forces. These changes lead to higher radiated sound pressure levels. For the considered cases, differences in the one-third octave bands spectra reach 10 dB, while the single value of the total noise differs by about 2 dB. The results indicate that even small lateral shifts of the contact point are relevant for wheel-rail vibration and rolling noise prediction.