Maglev vehicle-switch girder coupled vibration characteristics analysis based on distributed co-simulation

The violent coupled vibration between the electromagnetically levitated vehicles and the steel switch girder had happened in several engineering practices, especially under the very low speed conditions. In order to simulate accurately the abnormal vibration and explore its underlying causes, this paper develops a distributed co-simulation framework, including maglev vehicle dynamic modelling by SIMPACK software, switch dynamic modelling by ANSYS software and a co-simulation coupler developed by C++ language to implement co-simulation of maglev vehicles and switch girder system. Dynamic response of maglev vehicles and switch girder system under various conditions of running speed and structural damping ratio are simulated and compared to obtain the mechanism and characteristics of coupled vibration. These results agree well with dynamic phenomena happened in the engineering practices. Further analysis shows that the levitation modules are impacted in turn by the vertical misalignments and rotation angles at both ends of switch girder, so that vibration energy of the switch girder cannot be attenuated rapidly by its relatively small damping and dead weight. The severe coupled vibration can be suppressed effectively by adding the tuned mass dampers, but improving constraints of switch girder and optimizing levitation control parameters should be paid more attention in the future.