Modelling of structural flexibility of the railway vehicles carbody

The accuracy in the models of railway vehicles in the ride comfort evaluation mainly derives from the modelling of the carbody structural flexibility. The former part of the paper herein reviews the 'flexible carbody' type methods used to represent the carbody structural flexibility in the approaches targeting the identification of certain methods to reduce the flexible vibrations in the carbody so as to improve the ride comfort of the railway vehicles. What seems to apply are the simple beam models such as Euler - Bernoulli or Timoshenko, structure type models and detailed multi-body, finite-element models or combinations of multi-body and finite-elements models. The latter part will feature a contrastive analysis regarding the comfort index coming from the numerical simulations based on 'rigid carbody' and 'flexible carbody' original models. It is highlighted that the comfort performance of a railway vehicle evaluated on the basis of a 'rigid carbody' mode is overrated.