Transition characteristics of the dynamic behavior of a vehicle wheel-rail vibro-impact system

A two-degree-of-freedom vehicle wheel-rail impact vibration system model is developed, and the equivalent impact stiffness and damping of the rail are fitted applying ABAQUS, taking into account the high and low irregularity generated by the welded joints of the rail. A wheel-rail periodic interface with fixed impact was selected as the Poincaré map, and the fourth-order Runge-Kutta numerical method with variable step size was used to solve the system response. The dynamic characteristics of the system are investigated using a combination of the Bifurcation diagram, Phase plane diagram, the Poincaré map, the Time-domain diagram and the Frequency-domain diagram. It is verified that the vehicle wheel-rail impact vibration system has Hopf bifurcation, Neimark-Sacker bifurcation, Period-doubling bifurcation and Boundary crisis, and there are rich and complex nonlinear dynamic behavior changes. The research on the bifurcation and chaos characteristics of vehicle wheel-rail impact vibration systems can provide a reference for improving the stability of vehicle operation in engineering practice as well as the prediction and control of chaos in vehicle vibration reduction design.