Reliability based analysis of the crosswind stability of railway vehicles

The computational models used to assess the crosswind stability of railway vehicles by multibody simulation (MBS) are affected by large uncertainties. Especially, the aerodynamic loads acting on the vehicle are difficult to model and the respective parameters cannot be easily acquired. Such uncertainties are usually neglected in the safety norms even though their effects on the risk assessment can be very large. In this paper the problem is tackled by modelling the most influential but uncertain parameters as stochastic variables. The resulting task can be efficiently managed by reliability techniques, mainly inherited from structural mechanics. This finally leads to the substitution of the conventional characteristic wind curve (CWC) by the probabilistic characteristic wind curve (PCWC). The proposed approach is referred to the most recent European norms for crosswind stability and exemplified on the test case of a German high speed train (ICE2). (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.