Analysis of Experimental Data in the Context of Safety against Derailment of a Railway Vehicle, Using the Energy Method
This article describes an example analysis of safety against derailment of a railway vehicle. The analysis is based on the experimental data recorded during measurement of the wheel-rail interaction forces and lateral accelerations. The data is used for the calculation of two safety against derailment indicators and then the indicators are compared to each other. The first indicator is the ratio of the lateral to vertical wheel-rail forces Y/Q, based on the Nadal criteria. The second indicator is given in the energy description. In this description, the derailment of a railway vehicle depends on the amount of the work that has been done by the total lateral force acting on the single wheelset. The second indicator can be particularly convenient for a railway vehicle condition monitoring system, because it does not require the measurement of the contact forces.