An advanced vehicle–slab track interaction model considering rail random irregularities

This paper investigates a more advanced vertical vehicle–slab track interaction model (VTIM) by considering the discontinuity of track slabs, besides, it can be degenerated to the traditional two-dimensional model conveniently. Moreover, a cyclic calculation method (CCM) is further developed to solve infinite length calculations. On this basis, the proposed dynamic model and CCM are validated by comparing with the more comprehensive three-dimensional train–track model and fixed-point excitation method. Then, from aspects of probability statistics and frequency analysis, an illustrative example is particularly conducted to comprehensively characterize the dynamic responses of vehicle–slab track systems, in which the representative and realistic rail irregularity sets simulated by the track irregularity probabilistic model are used as the loading inputs. Results show that, with a low consumption of computational time and computer memory, the dynamic results derived from VTIM and CCM have a high accuracy, which indicates that the proposed dynamic model and calculation method can be efficiently and accurately used to analyze train–slab track interactions.