A Proposal for Improving the Performance of a Two-Axle Rail-Guided Vehicle

In a recent paper (I)‡ it was shown how the dynamic behaviour of a conventional, single, elastically restrained railway wheelset could be improved by replacing the rigid torsional coupling between the wheels with a coupling which had variable viscous characteristics. The consequences of fitting these damper-coupled wheelsets to a two-axle vehicle are now examined theoretically. Analysis of the simplest mathematical model reveals that the basic obstacles to correspondingly improved behaviour of the complete vehicle are very similar to those which confront the suspension designer of a conventional vehicle, and yield, in principle, to the same approach that has been adopted in relation to these vehicles elsewhere. As a result, the improvement in dynamic performance obtained with the single damper-coupled wheelset may apply equally to a two-axle vehicle which has these wheelsets.