Locomotive dynamic performance under traction/braking conditions considering effect of gear transmissions

Traction or braking operations are usually applied to trains or locomotives for acceleration, speed adjustment, and stopping. During these operations, gear transmission equipment plays a very significant role in the delivery of traction or electrical braking power. Failures of the gear transmissions are likely to cause power loses and even threaten the operation safety of the train. Its dynamic performance is closely related to the normal operation and service safety of the entire train, especially under some emergency braking conditions. In this paper, a locomotive–track coupled vertical–longitudinal dynamics model is employed with considering the dynamic action from the gear transmissions. This dynamics model enables the detailed analysis and more practical simulation on the characteristics of power transmission path, namely motor–gear transmission–wheelset–longitudinal motion of locomotive, especially for traction or braking conditions. Multi-excitation sources, such as time-varying mesh stiffness and nonlinear wheel–rail contact excitations, are considered in this study. This dynamics model is then validated by comparing the simulated results with the experimental test results under braking conditions. The calculated results indicate that involvement of gear transmission could reveal the load reduction of the wheelset due to transmitted forces. Vibrations of the wheelset and the motor are dominated by variation of the gear dynamic mesh forces in the low speed range and by rail geometric irregularity in the higher speed range. Rail vertical geometric irregularity could also cause wheelset longitudinal vibrations, and do modulations to the gear dynamic mesh forces. Besides, the hauling weight has little effect on the locomotive vibrations and the dynamic mesh forces of the gear transmissions for both traction and braking conditions under the same running speed.