Effect of the asymmetry of suspension damping on the ride comfort of railway vehicles

In terms of reliability, the damper represents the critical element of the suspension in the rail vehicle. A damper failure brings about a reduction in the damping of the suspension it belongs to, thus leading to the asymmetry of the suspension damping in the vehicle. The paper presents an analysis of the effect that the asymmetry of the secondary suspension damping has on the vertical vibration behaviour in the vehicle carbody and on the ride comfort, while using to that purpose the results derived from numerical simulations. The characteristics of the vibration behaviour for the resonance frequencies of the carbody dominant vertical modes are pointed out via the power spectral density of the carbody acceleration, which is weighted by the function of the sensitivity of the human body to the vertical vibrations. The ride comfort is assessed based on the ride index comfort calculated in three carbody reference points - at the centre and above the two bogies.