Application of DVA theory in vibration reduction of carbody with suspended equipment for high-speed EMU

The theory of dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) was applied to restrain the vibration of carbody for high-speed electric multiple unit (EMU). The carbody was modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam with the equipment mounted on the chassis regarded as a DVA. Suspension parameters of the equipment were optimized based on the modal analysis of the beam and parameter optimization of the DVA. Vertical motion equations of the carbody and equipment were derived to study the effect of the suspension parameters on the vibration of carbody, which included the suspension frequency, damping ratio, mounting position and mass. Then a 3D rigid-flexible coupled vehicle system dynamics model was built to simulate the response of carbody and equipment to track excitation. The results show that the equipment mounted on the carbody chassis can be regarded as a DVA to reduce the flexible vibration of carbody, and the optimum suspension frequency can be calculated theoretically with the first-order vertical bending mode of carbody considered. Heavy equipment should be mounted to the carbody center as close as possible to obtain a significant vibration reduction, while light equipment has quite limited contribution to that. Also, a laboratory test was conducted on the full-scale test rig which shows a good agreement with the theoretical analysis and dynamic simulations. The faster the vehicle runs, the more significant are the advantages of the elastic suspension.