On reliability and sensitivity methods for vehicle systems under stochastic crosswind loads

Abstract

This paper deals with the probabilistic investigation of the crosswind stability of ground vehicles with a strong focus on railway vehicle dynamics. The turbulent crosswind excitation is reduced to an artificial gust model, which is based on the so-called constrained simulation concept and where the gust amplitude, the gust duration and the aerodynamic coefficients of the vehicle are considered as random variables. The railway vehicle is simulated as a nonlinear multi-body vehicle model. Because of the random variables, a probabilistic analysis of the system has to be performed, including a reliability analysis to compute the overturning probability and including a sensitivity analysis concerning the random variables and the parameters of the probability density functions of the random variables.