Rubber joint of high-speed trains is used to connect the wheel and the bogie for providing primary suspension stiffness. High-frequency vibration due to the wheel-rail contact has crucial influence to the comfort of trains. To reduce the high-frequency vibration transmitted from the wheelset to the bogie, an MRE rubber joint with bandgap characteristics for isolating vibration is proposed. Firstly, the stiffness of each MRE layers and mass of each steel rings were matched to same based on the bandgap generation mechanism of mechanical metamaterials. Then, vibration transfer equation based on the spring-mass model was established. The bandgap frequency was theoretically calculated and simulated by Multiphysics software. Finally, an MRE rubber joint with bandgap characteristics was fabricated and tested. The tunable bandgap characteristics and vibration isolating performance of MRE rubber joint were verified experimentally. The experiments show that the initial bandgap width is 688 Hz which can be broaden by 17.9% when applied a current of 4.5 A. The root mean square value of acceleration was reduced by 49.5% under harmonic excitation. This work has high significance of improving the dynamics of high-speed trains for overcoming conflicting stiffness and vibration isolation.

Magnetorheological elastomer；rubber joint； bandgap；