DYNAMICAL BEHAVIOR OF ARTICULATED TRAIN CAR AND INFLUENCE ON VERTICALCOMFORT

The aim of the study developed in this article is to stress the main p hysical phenomena linked to the articulation of vehicles from a system atic modeling of the railway train dynamics. Confort has been, up to n ow, one of the main criteria in the specification sheets which any veh icle has to meet when being designed and even when answering an invita tion to tender. Several solutions currently exist to determine the com fort levels inside railway vehicles but these solutions have always be en reduced to the study of a single vehicle. The idea is to develop th e research problematics in order to demonstrate the validity or not of the study of vehicles isolated in the articulated train cars; or in c ase of articulated train cars to show that the dynamical features are modified and have a non-neglectable influence on the comfort behaviour of the different vehicles of this train car. In the first place, a si mple model will be made to represent correctly the behaviour of the ve hicle. A modal analysis on models with several articulated vehicles wi ll be made to underscore the phenomena related to the increase in vehi cles. A forced response analysis will assess the phenomena and help to determine a solution with an integrated damper located in the joint.