Maglev vehicle/guideway vertical random response and ride quality

The research and development (R & D) of maglev technology had made a great progress in China since the early 1980s. Especially, a 35 km-long Shanghai high-speed maglev railway employing the German Transrapid system began to be constructed on March 1, 2001. Based on the Transrapid system, the paper develops a 10-degree-of-freedom model of maglev vehicle running over three types of guideways with constant speed. Random guideway irregularities are discussed and taken into account for simulation of the vehicle response and for evaluation of the ride comfort. Using the direct time integration method and the discrete fast Fourier transform (DFFT), random responses of the maglev vehicle-guideway systems are obtained and analyzed. Numerical results show that the resonant frequency of car body acceleration response is 0.5-1 Hz, and there is a 2.2 Hz periodic vibration due to the periodic configuration of rigid piers when the maglev vehicle travels over the elevated-beam guideway. The car body acceleration power spectral density (PSD) curves meet well the ride quality criterion of the urban tracked aircushion vehicle (UTACV) and the maximum acceleration of car body is less than 0.05 g. Moreover, the Sperling ride index values are less than 2.5 as long as the operational speed is less than 450 km/h. It is concluded that the maglev vehicle ride quality is quite well.