Influence of Structural Stiffness and Loss Factor on Railroad Vehicle Comfort

This paper presents a new formulation for analyzing beam on elastic supports traveling irregular profiles. The model is first approximation of passenger railway vehicle car body. main difference with previous works the use complex modulus to represent structural damping rather than relying equivalent viscous terms. groups rigid body modes flexible and proposes matrix form that easy interpret solve in frequency domain. Comfort indexes are readily obtained from weighted response spectral densities. used assess influence stiffness comfort. It will be shown evolution comfort non-monotonic and, therefore, does not always improve as increases.