Dynamic analysis of a high-speed railway train with the defective axle bearing

Axle bearings (AXBs) are critical parts for high-speed railway trains (HSTs). Local faults in the AXBs have great influences on the operational dynamics of HSTs. Although some previous works formulated the local faults in single AXB, the vibrations of the whole train system with the defective AXB cannot be described. To overcome this problem, this study conducts a dynamic model for a HST considering a local fault in one AXB. The previous single AXB model cannot formulate the studied case. The impacts caused by the fault in the AXB is defined as a time-dependent force model considering a half-sine type. The road spectrum excitations from the roadbed and rail are formulated by a track irregularities model. The effects of the train speeds and fault sizes on the HST dynamics are introduced. The simulation results from the proposed and previous works are contrasted to show the model validation. The results show that the faults in the AXB will greatly affect the HST dynamics. It depicts that this study can afford a more reasonable approach for understanding the dynamics of HSTs considering the defective AXBs compared to the reported single AXB model.