Optimal Strain Gauge Placement in Instrumented Wheelset for Measuring Wheel-Rail Contact Forces

摘要

Concurrent measurement of the wheel-rail contact forces is always a crucial factor in design of safe railway vehicles. Commonly, instrumented wheelset has been developed towards this goal. A novel technique for precise design of the instrumented wheelset is presented in this paper. Influences of different factors such as the wheel rotation, the temperature or the centrifugal force are eliminated by cancelation of the higher harmonics. The accuracy of estimated forces is dependent on the placement of gauges on the instrumented wheelset. A solution procedure in terms of mean square error is implemented to determine the optimal radial locations of the strain gauge to achieve the most precise force measurement. Validation of the proposed method through numerical simulation is also presented. We show that the effectiveness and robustness of the technique are preserved even in the presence of noise in strain signal.