Keywords: structural flexibility, multibody systems, virtual bodies, railway dynamics.

The bogie frame is a safety-critical component of railway vehicles that motivates frequent visual inspections to allow the timely detection of damage. Monitoring the condition of the bogie frame during the operation using a sensor system could improve the maintenance strategy of railway vehicles. However, it is not clear how damage can be detected during the operation using the measured response of the bogie frame. This work aims at identifying the sensitivity of the structural response of the bogie frame to damage, in particular fatigue cracks, using computational tools. This task is supported by an improved flexible multibody methodology formulated to deal with flexible bodies described by solid finite elements characterised by three nodal degrees of freedom (DoFs). The implementation includes suitable reference conditions, the use of the component mode synthesis, and the application of the virtual bodies methodology. The simulations involve different locomotive models running on a realistic straight track with irregularities. The results show that the flexibility of the bogie frame affects the structural response in the mid-frequency range. The presence of a synthetic crack in the bogie frame model causes differences in the acceleration signals measured by virtual sensors. These differences in vibrational behaviour create the opportunity to assess the condition by comparing nominal and measured signals and associating the differences of the signals with damage magnitude using adequate monitoring techniques.

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