A fundamental study on the performance of tuned mass dampers installed periodically on a fast-rotating train wheel

Wheel/rail rolling noise is still the main contributor to high-speed train pass-by noise even at 350 km/h. To control wheel vibration and sound radiation, tuned mass dampers (TMDs) may be installed on the wheel. Until now, TMDs have been designed and tested without consideration of wheel rotation, and the effect of wheel rotation on the vibration control performance of the TMDs is unclear. To bridge this gap, a model is developed for predicting the response of a rotating wheel with TMDs subject to a stationary harmonic load, mimicking a harmonic component of the wheel/rail force, so that the effect of wheel rotation on the vibration control performance of the TMDs can be studied. For simplicity, the TMDs are modelled as damped mass-spring systems vibrating either axially or radially without considering the effect of the Coriolis force. The parameters of the TMDs are designed according to the conventional fixed-point theory for dynamic vibration absorbers. The wheel with TMDs is a cyclically periodic structure formed of an axisymmetric structure (the base wheel) and periodically arranged TMDs. In the model, the interaction forces between the base wheel and the TMDs are taken as unknowns. The displacements of the base wheel due to the externally applied load and the interaction forces are formulated based on a previously developed 2.5D FE model of the base wheel. It is shown that the interaction forces can be decomposed into frequency components to be determined by solving a set of linear algebraic equations. Results are produced for a typical high-speed train wheel with different numbers of TMDs of different tuning frequencies. The results show that, the fixed-point theory for dynamic vibration absorber may be used to design TMDs for a fast-rotating train wheel, although the design may not be optimal; for a given total mass of TMDs and a given mode of the base wheel, the number of TMDs should be 2 times the nodal number of the mode plus 1.