Influence of high-frequency vibration-absorbing fasteners on suppressing localized rail bending modal vibration

Abstract Since the view that the localized rail third-order bending mode can cause high-order polygonization (mainly 18–23) of high-speed train wheels was put forward in 2017, many scholars have attempted to link a connection between the localized rail bending modes and wheel polygonization phenomenon and polygonal wheel passing frequency. This paper first establishes a flexible track model considering the structural and parametric characteristics of fasteners, verifies the model by using vehicle tracking test data, then investigates the influence of fastener parameter matching on the localized rail bending modes, and obtains the following conclusions: (1) There is nearly a 1:1 mapping relationship between the localized rail bending modal frequency and polygonal wheel passing (PWP) frequency, which supports that the localized rail bending mode is one of the causes of wheel polygonization. (2) The iron plate of the fastener system plays a role of dynamic vibration absorber in the vehicle-rail coupled system, and the fastener parameters significantly influence the localized rail bending modal vibration. Finally, this paper proposes a design principle of a high-frequency vibration-absorbing fastener, which provides a feasible solution to mitigate the localized rail bending modal vibration and high-order wheel polygonization. Meanwhile, it points out that this measure may induce other high-frequency vibration problems, e.g., aggravating modal vibration above 800 Hz. Further, this paper proposes a concept of differentiated arrangement of fasteners, suggesting that different high-frequency vibration-absorbing fasteners be installed in different sections of the whole line to make the localized rail bending modal frequency of the whole line disordered, thus disrupting and further mitigating the development of the wheel polygonization.