Abstract: High-speed locomotives are prone to carbody or bogie hunting when the wheel-rail contact conicity is excessively low or high. This can cause negative impacts on vehicle dynamics performance. This study presents four types of typical yaw damper layouts for a high-speed locomotive (Bo-Bo) and compares, by using the multi-objective optimization method, the influences of those layouts on the lateral dynamics performance of the locomotive; the linear stability indexes under low-conicity and high-conicity conditions are selected as optimization objectives. Furthermore, the radial basis function-based high-dimensional model representation (RBF-HDMR) method is used to conduct a global sensitivity analysis (GSA) between key suspension parameters and the lateral dynamics performance of the locomotive, including the lateral ride comfort on straight tracks under the low-conicity condition, and also the operational safety on curved tracks. It is concluded that the layout of yaw dampers has a considerable impact on low-conicity stability and lateral ride comfort but has little influence on curving performance. There is also an important finding that only when the locomotive adopts the layout with opening outward, the difference in lateral ride comfort between the front and rear ends of the carbody can be eliminated by adjusting the lateral installation angle of the yaw dampers. Finally, force analysis and modal analysis methods are adopted to explain the influence mechanism of yaw damper layouts on the lateral stability and differences in lateral ride comfort between the front and rear ends of the carbody.

Key words: High-speed locomotive; Yaw damper layout; Lateral stability; Lateral ride comfort; Multi objective optimization; Global sensitivity analysis (GSA)

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