On the vibro-acoustic behaviour of high-speed train wheels

Since many years the problem of noise emission from railway wheels has been deeply studied and analyzed. Physical phenomena, linked to this noise emission, are well known and many solutions, aimed at reducing the global disturbances, have been proposed. Moreover the continuous development of the technologies used in the railway field asks constantly for new solutions. The aim of this paper is to analyze the vibro-acoustic behaviour of a high-speed train wheelset performing both experimental activities and numerical simulations; particularly an ETR 500 wheel has been chosen. The starting point for the experimental study is the analysis of the suspended free wheel, which can, then, be exploited to understand the wheel noise emission under operational conditions. This study is part of the researches about noise emission of train wheels carried out in the European Project called InMAR. © (2006) by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Department of Mechanical Engineering All rights reserved.