Measurement, Modelling and Simulation of Curve Squealing of Trains

Curve squealing of railway wheels occurs erratically in tight curves with a frequency of about 4 kHz. Squealing is caused by a self-excited stickslip oscillation in the wheel-rail contact. The mechanism which activates squeal is still unexplained and will be analyzed in the paper at hand. By starting with a modal model of the elastic wheel equipped with a threedimensional hard Coulomb contact, a stability analysis of the stationary run through a curve is performed for the four wheels of the investigated bogie. The results show that in particular the front inner wheel tends to squeal. A numerical simulation performed on the unstable states shows the existence of a self-excited stick-slip oscillation with a frequency that compares well with the ones measured at squeal.