Overturning Probability of Railway Vehicles under Wind Gust Loads

Sufficient crosswind stability is an important criterion in the approval process of railway vehicles. However, crosswind stability is in conflict with demands for light-weight constructions (especially cabin cars) and higher driving velocities. In many countries, the approval process foresees stability predictions based on worst case scenarios, where uncertainties are taken into account by means of safety factors and comparison with reference vehicles. This procedure is a burden for innovations and hinders the interoperability of railway vehicles. Therefore, models have been proposed that take some of the uncertainties associated with the wind gusts and the aerodynamic coefficients of the carbody into account. In this paper, a consistent stochastic wind gust model is proposed, and probabilistic characteristic wind curves are computed by means of a reliability analysis of the train-environment system.