I attended a conference on high speed rail vehicle design about 7-8
years ago in San Francisco. The subject of rail and wheel profile was a
really big issue for very high speed trains, due to concern about a
phenomenon known as "hunting", wherein the wheelsets move from side to
side, riding up and down the taper and up the side of the flange. This
in turn causes the trucks to move laterally as well as rotate slightly.
The issue for very high speed trains is that as they accelerate from
rest to maximum speed, they will pass through resonance frequencies of
this "hunting" motion, coupled with track and vehicle resonances that
can derail the vehicle at specific speeds that excite the resonances.
There was a lot of design effort going into various damping, control and
sensor technologies trying to address this problem. Since the French
TGV books along at over 200 mph regularly and over 300 mph under special
test conditions, I assume that they whipped this problem!
Tony ("200 mph") Dixon is the only Ga 1 live steamer I know who runs his
trains fast enough to be concerned about this, though!
_______________________________________________
SSLiveSteam mailing list
Send messages: [email protected]
Cancel subscription: http://postfix.45mm.com/mailman/listinfo/sslivesteam
Rules: http://www.45mm.com/sslivesteam_guide.html
