With the rapid development of transportation industry, advanced rail vehicle technology received more considerable attention than ever. The stiffness of the train’ s rubber joint at the primary suspension system has a crucial influence on the operation stability and curve-passing performance. As traditional rubber joint only provides non-adjustable parameter, they cannot meet the conflicting stiffness requirements. When the train is running at high speed on straight track, a high primary longitudinal stiffness in bogie design is required, whereas better performance passing through the curve track calls for a relatively soft primary longitudinal stiffness. To solve this critical problem, a novel rubber joint based on magnetorheological shear stiffening elastomer (MSSE) was proposed. The joint stiffness can be adjusted by not only its inherent frequency-dependent property, but also magnetic field control generated by electromagnets. The prototype of the MSSE joint was fabricated and assembled. Stiffness controllability of the MSSE joint was tested using an MTS machine. MTS testing under varying displacement amplitude at fixed frequency was also performed to investigate the influence of the varying displacement amplitude on the effective stiffness. The results revealed that the stiffness of this MSSE joint can be controlled effectively credited to the rate-dependent SSE and adjustable electromagnetics. Then an innovative model was established to numerically evaluated the rubber joint’ s influence on the train’ s stability and trafficability, demonstrating the reliability of satisfying the conflicting stiffness requirements to achieve high speed stability and curve trafficability simultaneously.
 

MSSE rubber joint, railway vehicle, high-speed stability, curve trafficability