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Rail Vehicle Mechatronics
Ground Vehicle Engineering
Dr. Vladimir V. Vantsevich
Professor and Director
Program of Master of Science in Mechatronic Systems Engineering
Lawrence Technological University, Michigan

Road Vehicle Dynamics


Fundamentals and Modeling Theory and Design, Second Edition
Georg Rill and Abel Arrieta Castro

Driveline Systems of Ground Vehicles


Theory and Design
Alexandr F. Andreev, Viachaslau Kabanau, Vladimir Vantsevich

Road Vehicle Dynamics


Fundamentals and Modeling
Georg Rill

Dynamics of Wheel-Soil Systems


A Soil Stress and Deformation-Based Approach
Jaroslaw A. Pytka

Design and Simulation of Heavy Haul Locomotives and Trains


Maksym Spiryagin, Peter Wolfs, Colin Cole, Valentyn Spiryagin, Yan Quan Sun,
Tim McSweeney

Automotive Accident Reconstruction: Practices and Principles


Donald E. Struble

Design and Simulation of Rail Vehicles


Maksym Spiryagin, Colin Cole, Yan Quan Sun, Mitchell McClanachan, Valentyn
Spiryagin, Tim McSweeney

Control Applications of Vehicle Dynamics


Jingsheng Yu and Vladimir Vantsevich

Rail Vehicle Mechatronics


Maksym Spiryagin, Stefano Bruni, Christopher Bosomworth, Peter Wolfs,
Colin Cole

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.crcpress.com/


Ground-Vehicle-Engineering/book-series/CRCGROVEHENG
Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

Maksym Spiryagin, Stefano Bruni,


Christopher Bosomworth,
Peter Wolfs, and Colin Cole
MATLAB® is a trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. and is used with permission. The MathWorks does
not warrant the accuracy of the text or exercises in this book. This book’s use or discussion of MATLAB®
software or related products does not constitute endorsement or sponsorship by The MathWorks of a par-
ticular pedagogical approach or particular use of the MATLAB® software.
First edition published 2022
by CRC Press
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and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2022 Maksym Spiryagin, Stefano Bruni, Christopher Bosomworth, Peter Wolfs, and Colin Cole
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the authors and pub-
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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Names: Spiryagin, Maksym, author. | Bruni, Stefano, author. | Bosomworth,


Christopher, author. | Wolfs, Peter, author. | Cole, Colin, author.
Title: Rail vehicle mechatronics / Maksym Spiryagin, Stefano Bruni,
Christopher Bosomworth, Peter Wolfs and Colin Cole.
Description: First edition. | Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, 2022. | Series: Ground vehicle
engineering | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021029755 (print) | LCCN 2021029756 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367464738 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032148601 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003028994 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Railroad cars–Equipment and supplies. | Mechatronics. |
Railroads–Electronic equipment.
Classification: LCC TF375 .S6955 2022 (print) | LCC TF375 (ebook) |
DDC 625.2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021029755
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021029756

ISBN: 978-0-367-46473-8 (hbk)


ISBN: 978-1-032-14860-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02899-4 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781003028994

Typeset in Times
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Preface...................................................................................................................... xv
Acknowledgments...................................................................................................xvii
Authors.....................................................................................................................xix

Chapter 1 Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics........................................... 1


1.1 Historical Review....................................................................... 1
1.2 Theoretical Aspects for the Application of Mechatronic
System........................................................................................ 2
1.2.1 Stability and Curving....................................................3
1.2.1.1 Running Stability of a Railway
Vehicle........................................................... 3
1.2.1.2 Curving Behavior of a Railway
Vehicle........................................................... 4
1.2.2 Damage and Wear of Wheels and Rails........................ 5
1.2.2.1 Wear of Wheels and Rails.............................5
1.2.2.2 Rolling Contact Fatigue................................. 6
1.2.2.3 Metal Fatigue in Wheels, Axles, Rails,
and Other Types of Damage.......................... 7
1.2.3 Ride Comfort.................................................................7
1.3 Structure of this Book................................................................8
References........................................................................................... 11

Chapter 2 Modeling of Mechanical Systems for Rail Vehicles........................... 15


2.1 Introduction.............................................................................. 15
2.2 Classification for Theoretical and Experimental-Based
Modeling Approaches.............................................................. 16
2.2.1 Physical-Based Models................................................ 17
2.2.2 Black-Box Models....................................................... 19
2.3 Model of Wheel/Rail Contact..................................................20
2.3.1 Geometric Analysis of Wheel/Rail Contact,
Equivalent Conicity..................................................... 22
2.3.2 The Normal Contact Analysis: Normal Force,
Contact Patch, and Normal Stresses........................... 23
2.3.3 The Tangential Contact Analysis: Creepage
versus Creep Force Relationship.................................25
2.3.3.1 Kalker’s Linear Theory............................... 27
2.3.3.2 Heuristic Saturation Laws........................... 27
2.3.3.3 The Fastsim Method.................................... 29
2.3.3.4 Kalker’s CONTACT Algorithm.................. 29
2.3.3.5 Use of Lookup Tables.................................. 30

v
vi Contents

2.3.4 Wheel/Rail Creep Force Models for Traction and


Brake Studies.............................................................. 30
2.3.4.1 Polach Model............................................... 31
2.3.4.2 Modified Fastsim......................................... 32
2.3.4.3 Example of Identification of Creep
Force Model Parameters from
Measured Data............................................. 33
2.4 Modeling of Track and Track Irregularities.............................34
2.4.1 The Track System........................................................34
2.4.2 Nominal Track Geometry........................................... 35
2.4.3 Track Irregularity........................................................ 37
2.4.4 Track Models for Vehicle Dynamics Simulation........ 38
2.4.4.1 Rigid Track Model....................................... 39
2.4.4.2 Co-Following Sectional Models.................. 39
2.4.4.3 Finite Element Models................................. 39
2.4.4.4 Model of Switches and Crossings................40
2.5 Model of Suspension Components...........................................40
2.5.1 Primary and Secondary Suspensions in Railway
Vehicles.......................................................................40
2.5.2 Coil Springs, Rubber Springs, and Bushings.............. 42
2.5.3 Friction-Based Suspension Components..................... 43
2.5.4 Hydraulic Dampers.....................................................44
2.5.5 Air Spring Suspension................................................. 45
2.6 Pantograph-Catenary Interaction............................................. 47
2.7 Traction and Braking Dynamics, Control and
Modeling................................................................................... 49
2.7.1 Principles of Traction Braking Dynamics................... 49
2.7.2 Design Principles of Traction and Braking
Control......................................................................... 51
2.7.3 Modeling of the Traction Systems.............................. 54
2.8 Train Dynamics........................................................................ 55
2.8.1 Train Dynamics for a Single Vehicle.......................... 55
2.8.2 Longitudinal Train Dynamics..................................... 55
2.9 Pneumatic Brake Models.......................................................... 58
2.10 Modeling of Inter-Car Forces...................................................60
References........................................................................................... 62

Chapter 3 Modeling of Electrical Systems for Rail Vehicles.............................. 67


3.1 Electrical Topologies................................................................ 67
3.1.1 Diesel Electric Locomotives....................................... 67
3.1.2 Electric Locomotives.................................................. 67
3.1.3 Hybrids........................................................................ 69
3.1.3.1 Principles of Hybridization for Rail
Vehicles........................................................ 69
3.1.3.2 Hybrid Topologies........................................ 70
Contents vii

3.2 Traction Power Supplies........................................................... 71


3.2.1 Alternators and Generators......................................... 71
3.2.2 Rectifiers..................................................................... 71
3.2.2.1 Thyristor Rectifiers...................................... 72
3.2.2.2 PWM Rectifiers........................................... 73
3.2.3 Energy Storage............................................................ 74
3.2.3.1 Batteries....................................................... 74
3.2.3.2 Flywheels..................................................... 75
3.2.3.3 Super Capacitors.......................................... 76
3.2.4 Dynamic Braking Energy Management..................... 76
3.3 Traction Motors and Power Electronics................................... 77
3.3.1 DC Motors................................................................... 77
3.3.1.1 Machine Models.......................................... 78
3.3.1.2 Case Studies................................................. 79
3.3.2 Induction Machines.....................................................80
3.3.2.1 Machine Models..........................................80
3.3.2.2 Field-Oriented Control................................ 81
3.3.2.3 Direct Torque Control.................................. 86
3.3.2.4 Case Studies................................................. 89
3.3.3 Synchronous Machines............................................... 91
3.3.3.1 Machine Models.......................................... 91
3.3.3.2 Machine-Commutated Converters.............. 93
3.3.3.3 Field-Oriented Control................................ 93
3.3.3.4 Case Studies.................................................94
3.3.4 Brushless DC...............................................................94
3.3.4.1 Machine Models..........................................96
3.3.4.2 Field-Oriented Control................................96
3.3.4.3 Case Studies.................................................97
3.3.5 Slip Control.................................................................97
3.3.5.1 Case Studies................................................. 98
References...........................................................................................99

Chapter 4 Control Systems................................................................................ 103


4.1 Introduction............................................................................ 103
4.2 Open-Loop and Closed-Loop Control Systems..................... 103
4.3 Classical Control.................................................................... 105
4.3.1 Closed-Loop Transfer Function................................ 105
4.3.2 PID Feedback Control............................................... 107
4.4 Modern Control Approach..................................................... 108
4.4.1 State Space Representation....................................... 108
4.4.2 Pole Placement Method............................................. 109
4.4.3 Observer Design Technique...................................... 110
4.4.4 Optimal Control........................................................ 112
4.4.4.1 Linear–Quadratic Regulator...................... 113
4.4.4.2 Kalman Filter............................................. 113
viii Contents

4.4.4.3 Linear–Quadratic–Gaussian Control...... 115


4.4.4.4 H2 and H∞ Methods.................................... 115
4.4.4.5 Model Predictive Control.......................... 117
4.5 Non-Classical Control Methods............................................. 118
4.5.1 Fuzzy Control............................................................ 118
4.5.2 Neural Network-Based Control................................. 120
References......................................................................................... 121

Chapter 5 Actuators........................................................................................... 127


5.1 Introduction............................................................................ 127
5.2 Electro-Mechanical Actuators................................................ 128
5.2.1 Direct Current Motors............................................... 129
5.2.2 Alternating Current Motors...................................... 132
5.2.2.1 Induction Motors....................................... 133
5.2.2.2 Synchronous Motors.................................. 134
5.2.3 Mechanical Transmission.......................................... 137
5.2.3.1 Gear Trains................................................ 137
5.2.3.2 Ball Screw Transmission........................... 138
5.2.4 Model of an Electromechanical Actuator with
Brushless AC Motor.................................................. 139
5.3 Hydraulic Actuators................................................................ 141
5.3.1 Fluid Power System Basics........................................ 141
5.3.2 Hydraulic Fluids Properties...................................... 143
5.3.3 Managing Hydraulic Fluids....................................... 144
5.3.4 Hydraulic Cylinders.................................................. 145
5.3.5 Hydraulic Motors...................................................... 148
5.3.6 Modeling Control Valves.......................................... 150
5.3.7 Closed-Loop Circuits................................................ 153
5.3.8 Dynamic Performance Modeling of Actuator
Systems...................................................................... 155
5.3.9 Applications............................................................... 159
5.3.10 Overall Summary...................................................... 164
5.4 Pneumatic Actuators.............................................................. 164
5.4.1 Pneumatic Power System Basics............................... 164
5.4.2 Air Properties............................................................ 166
5.4.3 Pneumatic Cylinders................................................. 167
5.4.4 Air Motors................................................................. 170
5.4.5 Control Valves........................................................... 172
5.4.6 Restrictions and Chokes............................................ 174
5.4.7 Applications............................................................... 176
5.4.7.1 Railway Air Braking................................. 176
5.4.7.2 Railway Air Suspensions........................... 179
5.4.8 Overall Summary...................................................... 182
References......................................................................................... 182
Contents ix

Chapter 6 Sensors.............................................................................................. 185


6.1 Introduction............................................................................ 185
6.2 Displacement Sensors............................................................. 186
6.2.1 Resistive Sensors....................................................... 186
6.2.2 Capacitive Sensors..................................................... 187
6.2.3 Linear Variable Differential
Transformers............................................................. 187
6.3 Encoders................................................................................. 189
6.4 Speed Sensors......................................................................... 191
6.5 Accelerometers....................................................................... 192
6.5.1 Piezoelectric Accelerometers.................................... 194
6.5.2 Capacitive Accelerometers........................................ 196
6.6 Pressure Sensors..................................................................... 196
6.7 Measurement of Force and Torque in Mechatronic
Railway Vehicles.................................................................... 196
References......................................................................................... 198

Chapter 7 Modeling of Complex Systems......................................................... 199


7.1 Basic Principle of Complex System Design........................... 199
7.2 Introduction of Co-simulation................................................202
7.3 Co-simulation Techniques...................................................... 203
7.4 Review of the Existing Multi-Body Software Packages
and Their Co-simulation Functionalities................................204
7.4.1 Gensys and Matlab®/Simulink..................................204
7.4.2 Simpack and Simulink.............................................. 211
7.4.3 VI-Rail (ADAMS/Rail) and Simulink...................... 213
7.4.4 Vampire and Simulink.............................................. 214
7.4.5 Universal Mechanism and Simulink......................... 215
7.5 Design of Co-simulation Interfaces........................................ 215
7.5.1 Design of the Simple Simulink Model and
Generation of the Shared Library............................. 215
7.5.2 Shared Library Integration in the Code.................... 218
7.5.3 Compilation and Execution of the Code................... 222
7.6 Case Studies........................................................................... 223
7.6.1 Co-simulation for a Locomotive Traction
Control Study............................................................ 223
7.6.1.1 Multi-body Model of a Heavy Haul
Locomotive in Gensys...............................224
7.6.1.2 Model of a Locomotive Simplified
Traction System......................................... 226
7.6.1.3 Dynamic Response Test to Variations
of Adhesion Conditions at the Wheel-
Rail Interface............................................. 231
x Contents

7.6.2 Co-simulation for an Advanced Longitudinal


Train Dynamics Study.............................................. 234
7.6.2.1 Uni-directional Data Exchange
Co-simulation Approach............................ 235
7.6.2.2 Bi-directional Data Exchange
Co-simulation Approach............................ 237
7.6.2.3 Comparison of Results Obtained with
Two Data Exchange Co-simulation
Approaches................................................ 237
References......................................................................................... 242

Chapter 8 Microprocessor Computers and Electronics..................................... 247


8.1 Introduction............................................................................ 247
8.2 Microprocessors versus Microcontrollers.............................. 250
8.2.1 Microprocessors........................................................ 251
8.2.2 Microcontrollers........................................................ 251
8.3 Control Computers................................................................. 254
8.3.1 Programmable Logic Controllers.............................. 254
8.3.2 Field Programmable Gate Arrays............................. 255
8.4 Multi-Module Structures for Microprocessor-Based
Control Systems...................................................................... 256
8.5 Case Study: Microcontroller in Monitoring
System.................................................................................... 256
8.5.1 Design........................................................................ 257
8.5.2 Problem Formulation................................................. 258
8.5.3 Solution...................................................................... 258
References......................................................................................... 259

Chapter 9 Communications, Networks, and Data Exchange Protocols............. 263


9.1 Introduction............................................................................ 263
9.1.1 Intra-Car Communication Architecture....................264
9.1.2 Inter-Car Communication Architecture.................... 265
9.1.3 Train-to-Ground Communication
Architecture............................................................... 265
9.2 Common Types of Networks..................................................266
9.2.1 Wired Networks........................................................266
9.2.2 Wireless Networks.................................................... 267
9.2.3 Mixed Networks........................................................ 268
9.3 Common Communication Protocols...................................... 268
9.4 Case Study: Electronically Controlled Pneumatic
Brakes Communication Network........................................... 269
9.4.1 Inception of Electronically Controlled Pneumatic
Brakes........................................................................ 270
9.4.2 Network Communication.......................................... 270
Contents xi

9.4.3 Device Types............................................................. 270


9.4.4 Problem Formulation................................................. 271
9.4.5 Solution – Drawback 1.............................................. 271
9.4.6 Solution – Drawback 2.............................................. 272
References......................................................................................... 272

Chapter 10 Data Acquisition and Data Processing Techniques........................... 275


10.1 Introduction............................................................................ 275
10.2 General Layout of a Data Acquisition and Data
Processing System.................................................................. 276
10.3 Signal Conditioning................................................................ 277
10.4 Analog-To-Digital Conversion................................................ 278
10.4.1 Quantization and Quantization Error........................ 278
10.4.2 Sampling Frequency and Aliasing............................ 279
10.4.3 Anti-Aliasing Filters and Oversampling................... 281
10.5 Digital-To-Analog Conversion................................................ 282
10.6 Digital Filters.......................................................................... 282
10.7 Frequency Analysis for Discrete Signals................................ 286
References......................................................................................... 287

Chapter 11 Mechatronic Suspensions.................................................................. 289


11.1 Introduction............................................................................ 289
11.2 Active Primary Suspensions................................................... 290
11.2.1 Active Primary Suspension Functions...................... 290
11.2.1.1 Active Steering.......................................... 291
11.2.1.2 Active Running Gear Stabilization............ 291
11.2.1.3 Active Guidance........................................ 291
11.2.2 Active Primary Suspension Configurations.............. 292
11.2.2.1 Actuated Solid Wheelset........................... 292
11.2.2.2 Actuated Independently Rotating
Wheels....................................................... 293
11.2.2.3 Driven Independently Rotating
Wheels....................................................... 294
11.2.3 Control Strategies for Active Primary
Suspensions............................................................... 295
11.2.3.1 Strategies for Active Steering.................... 295
11.2.3.2 Strategies for Active Stabilization............. 297
11.2.3.3 Strategies for Active Guidance.................. 298
11.3 Active and Semi-Active Secondary Suspensions................... 298
11.3.1 Active and Semi-Active Secondary Suspension
Functions................................................................... 298
11.3.1.1 Improvement of Ride Comfort.................. 299
11.3.1.2 Improvement of Running Behavior
(Stability and Curving).............................. 299
xii Contents

11.3.2 Configurations and Hardware...................................300


11.3.2.1 Active/Semi-Active Lateral
Suspensions................................................300
11.3.2.2 Active/Semi-Active Vertical
Suspensions................................................ 301
11.3.2.3 Active/Semi-Active Secondary Yaw
Control.......................................................302
11.3.3 Control Strategies for Active and Semi-Active
Secondary Suspensions.............................................304
11.3.3.1 Low-Bandwidth Control for Ride
Comfort......................................................304
11.3.3.2 Skyhook Control........................................ 305
11.3.3.3 Local versus Modal Control......................307
11.3.3.4 Control Strategies for Secondary Yaw
Actuation....................................................308
11.3.3.5 Modern Control.........................................309
11.4 Car Body Tilting Systems...................................................... 310
11.5 Active Suspensions for Non-Conventional Vehicle
Architectures.......................................................................... 313
References......................................................................................... 313

Chapter 12 Real-Time Systems and Simulation.................................................. 317


12.1 Introduction: Aims of Real-Time Studies.............................. 317
12.2 What is a Real-Time System?................................................. 317
12.3 Requirements for the Development of Programming
Code for a Real-Time Application.......................................... 320
12.4 Requirements for the Development of Real-Time
Multi-Body Models................................................................ 321
12.5 Real-Time Prototyping and Testing........................................ 325
12.5.1 Software-in-the-Loop Approach............................... 326
12.5.2 Hardware-in-the-Loop Approach.............................. 326
12.6 Case Study: Development of a Real-Time Multi-Body
Model...................................................................................... 327
References......................................................................................... 334

Chapter 13 System Integration............................................................................. 337


13.1 Interpretation of System Integration....................................... 337
13.2 Inter-Disciplinary Approach for Design and Evaluation
Processes................................................................................ 339
13.3 Systems Integration Activities................................................ 341
13.4 Rail Vehicle Specific Standards and Guidelines.................... 342
References......................................................................................... 343
Contents xiii

Chapter 14 Practical Examples and Case Studies............................................... 345


14.1 Case A: Simplified Models of Railway Vehicle Lateral
Dynamics for Suspension Control Studies............................. 345
14.1.1 The 2 Degrees of Freedom Wheelset Model............ 345
14.1.2 The 6 Degrees of Freedom Bogie Model.................. 354
14.2 Case B: Modeling of a Bogie with Active Steering
System.................................................................................... 359
14.2.1 Basic Principle of Active Steering System for
Solid-Axle Wheelset................................................. 359
14.2.2 Vehicle Model Built in Simpack...............................364
14.2.3 Controller and Actuator Model in Simulink............. 365
14.2.4 Simulation Scenarios and Results............................. 368
14.3 Case C: Modeling of a Heavy Haul Diesel-Electric
Locomotive Traction Power System....................................... 375
14.3.1 Modeling Concept..................................................... 375
14.3.1.1 Modeling of the Power System.................. 375
14.3.1.2 Modeling of the Adhesion Control............ 380
14.3.2 Implementation in Simulink...................................... 381
14.3.3 Simulation Scenarios and Results............................. 385
14.4 Case D: Modeling of a Heavy Haul Hybrid
Locomotive............................................................................. 387
14.4.1 Locomotive Design Modification.............................. 387
14.4.2 Modeling of ESS Traction System for the Hybrid
Locomotive................................................................ 389
14.4.3 Implementation in Simulink...................................... 389
14.4.4 Simulation Scenarios and Results............................. 391
References......................................................................................... 394

Index....................................................................................................................... 397
Preface
Over the past ten years, a great number of books specializing on rail vehicle engi-
neering design and dynamics have been published. A small number of those books
cover some mechatronic aspects applicable to rail vehicles and technologies. It is
also necessary to mention that there are many scientific and research papers on rail
vehicle mechatronics published in journals and conference proceedings. However,
for reasons that are not clear, there has not yet been a book that is fully dedicated
to the questions related to rail vehicle mechatronics as well as providing the back-
ground required for students and engineers to fully understand the mechatronic con-
cepts applicable in rail vehicle designs.
Considering that rail vehicle mechatronics is a high-tech approach that combines
multidisciplinary engineering theories, numerical simulations, digital communica-
tions, data acquisition, instrumentation, control, and software development, it is not
easy to collect and provide a coherent presentation of all the relevant information in
just one book. The authors hope that the task was solved successfully with the intro-
duction of the first mechatronic book related to rail vehicles. In this book, all relevant
topics are covered, and the literature references presented provide detailed informa-
tion and extensive answers to the background and current situation with mechatron-
ics in the field of rail vehicle design and technologies.
We hope that readers find this rail vehicle mechatronic book useful. At the same
time, we understand that there are always challenges for the further improvements of
this book contents because the railway mechatronic science progresses very quickly,
and it also seeks to implement all new design processes and technologies available
on the market. The authors recommend that this book be used by students, practical
engineers, and researchers interested in rail vehicle mechatronics designs.

Maksym Spiryagin
Stefano Bruni
Chris Bosomworth
Peter Wolfs
Colin Cole
June 2021

MATLAB® and Simulink are registered trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc.


For product information, please contact:

The MathWorks, Inc.


3 Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA 01760–2098 USA
Tel: 508–647–7000
Fax: 508–647–7001
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.mathworks.com
xv
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank their colleagues and supporters for their assistance
with the preparation of this book. Particular mention must be made of:

• Tim McSweeney for the careful proofreading and valuable comments on


this book.
• Qing Wu from the Centre for Railway Engineering for his help in the devel-
opment of co-simulation interfaces between longitudinal train dynamics
and multibody software packages.
• Igor Spiryagin and Valentyn Spiryagin for their long-term support and sig-
nificant contribution in the development of content on locomotive traction
and design issues.
• Bin Fu from Politecnico di Milano, for his help in the development of co-
simulation examples to demonstrate active suspensions.
• Emanuele Zappa from Politecnico di Milano, for valuable comments on
Chapters 6 and 10.

We also thank the following people involved in the development and support of spe-
cialized rail vehicle dynamics software products:

• Ingemar Persson from ABDesolver for his great support of our research
developments and innovations, and for the implementation of our co-­
simulation ideas in the GENSYS rail vehicle dynamics software.
• Mark Hayman from Insyte Solutions for his persistence in the development
of wheel-rail contact routines for traction studies and their benchmarking.

We would like to thank the CRC Press publisher’s team who worked on this book
for their acceptance of our proposal followed by ongoing support during the writing
process.
Finally, we would like to thank our families for their understanding and support
during the writing of this book.

xvii
About the Authors
Maksym Spiryagin is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Railway Engineering
and a Professor of Engineering at Central Queensland University. He received his
PhD in the field of Railway Transport in 2004. Professor Spiryagin’s involvement in
academia and railway industry projects includes many years of research experience
in locomotive design and traction, rail vehicle dynamics, contact mechanics, wear,
mechatronics, and the development of complex systems using various approaches.
He has published four books, including Design and Simulation of Rail Vehicles in
2014 and Design and Simulation of Heavy Haul Locomotives and Trains in 2017
by Taylor & Francis, and he has more than two hundred other scientific publica-
tions and twenty patents as one of the inventors. Professor Spiryagin is a Chartered
Professional Engineer and RPEQ in Australia and a Chartered Engineer in the UK.

Stefano Bruni, PhD, is full professor at Politecnico di Milano, Department of


Mechanical Engineering, where he teaches applied mechanics and dynamics. He is
the leader of the “Railway Dynamics” research group, carrying out research on rail
vehicles and their interaction with the infrastructure. Prof. Bruni authored more than
270 scientific papers, mostly related to rail vehicle dynamics, train-track interac-
tion, wheel/rail contact forces, damage and wear of wheels and rails, active control
and condition monitoring of rail vehicles, and pantograph-catenary interaction. He
is/has been the lead scientist for several research projects funded by the railway
industry and by the European Commission. He is Vice-President of the IAVSD, the
International Association for Vehicle System Dynamics, and was chairman of the
IAVSD’05 International conference held in Milano in 2005. He is Editorial Board
member for some international journals in the field of Railway Engineering.

Chris Bosomworth has worked for the Centre for Railway Engineering at Central
Queensland University for over 15 years, firstly on software engineering for railway
applications in direct employment and then as a subcontractor as a part of Insyte
Solutions Pty Ltd on various simulation, instrumentation and mechatronic projects
related to train, locomotive, and wagon dynamics. He has a deep expertise in high
quality code writing, data acquisition, field testing, instrumentation, and micropro-
cessor-based system design and development services.

Peter Wolfs is Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at CQU. He is a Fellow


of Engineers Australia, a senior member of IEEE and an associate member of the
Centre for Railway Engineering. His special fields of expertise include electrical
power distribution, power quality and harmonics, railway traction power supply,
renewable energy supply, solar and hybrid electric vehicles, and intelligent systems
applications in power systems and railways. He received his PhD in the area of High
Frequency Link Power Conversion in 1992 from the University of Queensland. He
has more than two hundred scientific publications, four book chapters and five pat-
ents as one of the inventors.

xix
xx About the Authors

Colin Cole is the Director of the Centre for Railway Engineering at CQU. He has
worked in the Australian rail industry since 1984, starting with six years in mecha-
nized track maintenance for Queensland Railways. Since then, he has focused on
a research and consulting career involving work on track maintenance, train and
wagon dynamics, train control technologies and the development of on-board
devices. He has been extensively engaged with industry via the past nationally funded
Rail CRC programs and the Australasian Centre for Rail Innovation. His PhD was
in Longitudinal Train Dynamics Modelling. He has authored and/or co-authored
over two hundred technical papers, two books, numerous commercial research and
consulting reports, and has developed two patents relating to in-cabin locomotive
technologies.
1 Introduction to Rail
Vehicle Mechatronics

1.1 HISTORICAL REVIEW


The establishment of general mechatronics as a discipline has taken a long period of
time. If we consider the history timeline, it has a strong connection with the develop-
ment of automation and it can be easily divided into the following phases:

Phase 1: Automation of direct processes. This phase is dated to the end of the
18th century. In some cases, it can also be the time when students of some
colleges started to study the discipline referred to as “electromechanics.”
Phase 2: Analogue automation. This phase started by the late 1920s and con-
tinued to be developed into the late 1940s.
Phase 3: Digital automation. Immediately after the first transistor was invented
in 1947, the engineering world was focused on electronics and its application
in a variety of industry fields.
Phase 4: Digital automation control. By the late 1960s, the Japanese engineer
Tetsuro Mori from Yaskawa Electric Corporation was working on elec-
tronic controls for electric motors and at that time he introduced the term
mechatronics which only covered a combination of mechanics and elec-
tronics. The major difference between earlier electromechanics and mecha-
tronics as disciplines was that mechatronics provided much more flexibility
in terms of system design and its operation.
Phase 5: Digital mechatronic control. This phase was introduced in the
1970s and it was still considered the digital automation control phase in
most publications. However, the first 4-bit and 8-bit microprocessor chips
introduced in 1971 and 1972, respectively, allowed moving away from the
usage of mechanical mechanisms and devices and provided easy ways
to program different tasks for mechatronic systems. The outcome of this
was that mechatronic systems became more precise and faster in exercis-
ing control than their predecessors and, in addition, this made possible to
introduce automatic data collection and reporting features in the design of
mechatronic systems. At this stage, the transition of automatic and control
engineering [1] to mechatronics can be observed.
Phase 6: The microprocessor mechatronic control. In the 1990s, mechatron-
ics started to be more flexible by means of the usage of computerized sys-
tems that also included communication and networked technologies. This
allowed mechatronics as a discipline to cover some additional knowledge
areas such as information technologies, sensors, and actuators.

DOI: 10.1201/9781003028994-1 1
2 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

Mechatronics application for rail vehicles is a relatively new development in


comparison with the general mechatronics discipline. Professor Roger Goodall
published the history of railway vehicle design in 2009 [2], where the introduction
of mechatronics as a separate design phase for railway vehicle design is referred
to as the “Mechatronic Design Period” and is said to have started in the 1990s.
He wrote [2]:

During the 1990s, in other industries such as the aircraft and automotive industries,
the power that became available from designing the mechanical system in conjunction
with the electronics, computing and control, i.e., the use of mechatronics, was realised
in a variety of research and development programmes, Although the railway industry
is, perhaps naturally, somewhat behind these other two industries, nevertheless a vari-
ety of developments are being considered currently which imply that a ‘mechatronic
period’ is close to happening for railway vehicles.

Since then, the development of mechatronics for rail vehicle design has been rapidly
progressing with the implementation of new methods and modeling techniques in
addition to hardware developments. The major historical rail vehicle mechatronic
system design topics are [3–40]:

• Traction power systems


• Wheel adhesion systems
• Tilting systems
• Active suspension systems
• Active steering systems
• Braking systems
• Safety protection systems that provide protection against derailment
• Automatic train control systems
• Condition monitoring and fault detection
• Rail vehicle testing and roadworthiness acceptance

Considering the current dynamics in the application of modern communication and


measurement technologies and advanced diagnostic and control algorithms in rail
vehicle operations, including artificial intelligence and big data processing, it seems
inevitable that rail vehicles will become “increasingly mechatronic” which confirms
a prediction made in [13].

1.2 THEORETICAL ASPECTS FOR THE APPLICATION


OF MECHATRONIC SYSTEM
Understanding design and modeling processes and the associated dynamic perfor-
mance is fundamental for tasks associated with the rail vehicle mechatronic disci-
plines. The theoretical aspects for the practical application of mechatronic systems
on rail vehicles can be defined based on the railway operational, safety, and perfor-
mance requirements as presented in the next few subsections.
Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics 3

1.2.1 Stability and Curving


Stability and curving are two important aspects of a railway vehicle’s running
dynamics. Unfortunately, they often lead to conflicting design requirements for the
running gear. The term running gear refers to the ensemble of components in the
vehicle responsible for the vehicle’s running behavior. The running gear includes
components such as wheelsets, bearings, suspensions, bogie frames, brakes, and
traction bars. The design of the running gear involves finding a trade-off between
good stability at high speed and satisfactory curving behavior. Active vehicle control,
particularly active suspensions, is a way to remove this design conflict, so this is one
of the main areas for the use of mechatronics in railway vehicles.

1.2.1.1 Running Stability of a Railway Vehicle


Running stability is a term used by railway engineers in relation to a self-excited
motion of the wheelsets and bogies consisting of the combination of lateral displace-
ment and yaw rotation called hunting [41–43]. This behavior is typical of rail vehi-
cles equipped with solid wheelsets, i.e., pairs of conical wheels rigidly connected to
a common axle, while other types of lateral oscillation may arise for vehicles with
independently rotating wheels.
The hunting motion is strongly affected by the speed at which the vehicle runs
over the track: at low speed, an oscillation originated by an initial disturbance (e.g.,
from track imperfections) will be sufficiently damped so that the vehicle will soon
return to the unperturbed condition. However, above a threshold speed called critical
speed, the motion arising from the initial disturbance will have a growing amplitude
until it will be limited by the wheel flanges making contact with the rails. In this
condition, the hunting motion can be so violent as to produce permanent deformation
of the track and even lead to the derailment of the vehicle. It is therefore extremely
important that the vehicle is designed to have a critical speed sufficiently higher than
the maximum operational service speed.
It should be noted that the critical speed of a railway vehicle is affected by a
number of parameters, of which the most important to mention here is the conicity
of the wheel/rail couple [41]. Conicity can be described in simple terms as the rate of
variation of the wheel’s rolling radius with the lateral displacement of the wheelset
relative to the track centerline. For the same mechanical design of the running gear,
a lower critical speed can be expected for higher wheel conicity. Conicity is in turn
affected by some geometrical parameters of the wheel/rail couple, namely wheel
and rail profiles, track gauge, and the distance between the back of the flanges of the
wheels. Although some of these parameters are well defined, others are not known
precisely or will be subject to significant variation during the vehicle’s service life.
In particular, wheel wear results in a modification of the wheel profile and increased
conicity. Therefore, the design of the running gear for stability has to be performed
considering different conditions of wheel wear, including the condition of maximal
wear before wheel reprofiling.
The parameters involved in the design of the running gear having the largest
impact on running stability are the stiffness of the primary suspensions in longitudi-
nal and lateral directions, the bogie wheelbase and, as already mentioned, conicity.
4 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

In order to have a high critical speed, the vehicle should be designed to have stiff pri-
mary suspensions, a long bogie wheelbase and relatively low conicity. Unfortunately,
all of these measures will have a negative effect on curving as discussed below.
There are other design parameters of the running gear having influence on stability
(one example being the inertia of the bogie), but they are not described here as they
are less relevant to the design conflict between stability and curving.

1.2.1.2 Curving Behavior of a Railway Vehicle


A single, unconstrained solid wheelset with conical profiles running along a curve
will naturally align its axis of revolution along a radial or nearly radial direction,
minimizing the forces exchanged with the track [41]. However, some kind of con-
nection between the wheelset and the car body shall be provided, either directly or
through a bogie, to transfer efforts due to traction, braking and guidance and also,
as discussed above, to meet requirements on vehicle stability. This connection is
realized by suspensions establishing a flexible link between the wheelset and the car
body directly (single stage of suspension) or between the wheelset and an intermedi-
ate body, the bogie frame, which is then connected to the car body by another stage
of suspensions.
When two or more wheelsets are elastically connected with each other through
the bogie or car body, the direction of their axes deviates significantly from the radial
one and this is measured by the angle of attack, i.e., the angle formed by the axis of
revolution of each wheelset and the local radial direction, as shown in Figure 1.1. The
longer is the longitudinal distance L between two elastically connected wheelsets,
the larger will be the angle of attack that can be expected for a given curve radius R.
Due to the non-zero angle of attack, lateral creepages arise at wheel/rail contact
interfaces, affecting wheel/rail forces in the lateral direction, which will be larger

FIGURE 1.1 Angle of attack of a wheelset in a curve.


Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics 5

than what would be needed to balance the effect of centrifugal forces and track cant.
Furthermore, the lateral force on the leading wheelset will push the wheelset out of
the curve, causing contact of the flange of the outer wheel with the high rail. This in
turn will produce a large variation of the rolling radius on the outer wheel, resulting
in additional longitudinal creepage and hence longitudinal contact forces on both the
inner and outer wheels of the leading wheelset and sometimes also in the trailing
wheelset(s).
To sum up, having two or more wheelsets connected via elastic suspensions results
in large wheel/rail contact forces that are not needed to balance other forces arising
on the vehicle in the curve. These unnecessary forces may be harmful to the running
safety of the vehicle, can produce additional damage of the rolling surfaces in terms
of wear and rolling contact fatigue (RCF), may be the cause of permanent deforma-
tion of the track alignment, and may cause metal fatigue in the rails or damage to the
rail fasteners. Since these forces are ultimately arising on account of the formation
of an angle of attack, it follows that reducing the longitudinal distance between
elastically connected wheelsets is a major measure to improve curving behavior.
This is the primary reason why, since the early times of railways, bogies are used
in railway vehicles as the distance between elastically connected wheelsets for a
vehicle with bogies depends on the bogie wheelbase, which can be kept relatively
short (typically 1.8–3 m), and not on the length of the car body.
From the above discussion, it also follows that using relatively soft primary sus-
pensions is another effective measure to improve the curving behavior of the vehicle
and, in general, it can be concluded that using more conical wheels also improves
curving. We recall however that all these measures have a negative impact on the
stability of the vehicle, revealing the design conflict between curving and stability.
For a more detailed discussion of running stability and curving in railway vehicles,
the reader is referred to [41], while the use of mechatronic suspensions to remove the
design conflict between curving and stability is discussed in Chapter 11 of this book.

1.2.2 Damage and Wear of Wheels and Rails


Contact forces arising at the wheel/rail interface are responsible for damage and
degradation of the contacting bodies. Damage happens on the surface of the bodies
in terms of wear and RCF and also in the subsurface layers of the contacting bodies,
or even in portions of the vehicle and of the track not coming into direct contact with
each other, examples being metal fatigue in wheels, axles, bogie frames, and rails, or
track settlement and cracked sleepers. Mechatronic suspensions and control of trac-
tion and braking can reduce substantially many of these sources of damage.
In this subsection, the different types of damage mentioned above are concisely
reviewed and the case for introducing mitigation measures based on mechatronic
systems is outlined.

1.2.2.1 Wear of Wheels and Rails


According to tribological studies, wear of wheels and rails is related to the wear
number Tγ. This is the scalar product of the creepage and creep force vectors at
one wheel/rail contact point and can be seen as the energy per unit distance run
6 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

dissipated by frictional forces in the considered contact point. Tests performed on


twin disc machines have revealed the presence of different wear regimes depending
on the value of the ratio Tγ/A, with A being the area of the contact patch established
between the two bodies [44, 45]. In each wear regime, a different relationship can be
established between the frictional power density Tγ/A and wear rate, but generally a
larger frictional power will lead to an increase of the wear rate.
Large values of the frictional power can be expected when a railway vehicle runs
around a short radius curve, but also when large creep forces and creepages are
caused by traction and braking efforts, especially if a full slip condition is reached. It
follows that poor curving performance and poor traction and braking control are two
typical causes of accelerated wear of wheels and rails. Improving the curving behav-
ior through a proper design of passive suspensions is not always possible, as beyond
some point this can only be done at the expense of running stability. However, a
number of strategies making use of active control, active steering, and yaw relax-
ation to name just a few can be used to reduce wear dramatically without impairing
stability and will be introduced in Chapter 11.

1.2.2.2 Rolling Contact Fatigue


RCF occurs in the surface and subsurface layers of the wheel and rail due to repeated
nearly-cyclic local stresses caused by the rolling contact established between the
two bodies. When the amplitude of stresses exceeds the shakedown limit [46], a
phenomenon called “ratcheting” takes place, which means plastic deformation
cumulates from one loading cycle to another, ultimately resulting in material fail-
ure. RCF effects appear on the rolling surfaces in the form of small cracks. This
surface damage is normally not especially dangerous, as the damaged material is
removed by wear. However, RCF may also give rise to subsurface cracks either in
the wheel or in the rail head. Under some circumstances, these cracks will propa-
gate until reaching a critical size that will produce the sudden detachment of a
large portion of the wheel rim or of the rail head, potentially with very dangerous
consequences.
Theoretical and experimental investigations have shown that ratchetting and
hence RCF damage can be expected when the ratio of the maximum contact pres-
sure over the material’s yield strength is sufficiently large and, at the same time, the
ratio of the tangential contact force to the normal one (sometimes called the “used
friction coefficient”) is large enough [46].
Another approach to assessing the severity of RCF damage was developed in
the UK and, as for wheel and rail wear, is based on the value of the Tγ index [47].
According to this approach, when the Tγ is too low RCF damage will not develop
while, for quite large values of Tγ, wear will remove the surface damage caused
by RCF, so that eventually RCF will only take place for intermediate values of the
Tγ index.
Active control, by improving the curving performance of the vehicle, may lead
to a reduction of the creepages and contact forces in curves which can be beneficial
to reduce RCF. However, it is also possible that the reduction of Tγ, while reducing
wear, will promote RCF damage which would not develop in a vehicle equipped with
passive suspension due to material removal caused by wear.
Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics 7

1.2.2.3 Metal Fatigue in Wheels, Axles, Rails, and Other Types of Damage
Metal fatigue is highly relevant to the durability of different components in the roll-
ing stock and in the track. A fatigue failure occurring in a wheel or axle or bogie
frame may have catastrophic consequences and these components are therefore
designed for infinite life. However, some of these components, particularly railway
axles, are regularly inspected using non-destructive techniques (NDTs). In a similar
way, fatigue cracks developing in rails are highly dangerous and NDTs are being
developed to check the integrity of rails and of fishplate joints. Active control can
be used to reduce wheel/rail contact forces so that the stresses caused in these com-
ponents can be kept below the threshold that would trigger the propagation of a
fatigue crack. For wheels, axles, and rails, it is not only important to reduce the static
stresses due to the vehicle’s own weight and quasi-static stresses due to curving, but
it is also extremely important to reduce dynamic stresses arising from defects on the
rolling surfaces. Active suspensions in most cases will not be effective with mitigat-
ing the effect of such defects due to the high passband that would be required from
the actuators to control fast disturbance caused by these defects, but still will be
effective by reducing, e.g., RCF damage leading to spalling or shelling [48] which
is one of the major causes of geometric defects arising on the surface of wheels and
rails. Furthermore, braking control is effective to reduce the formation of wheel flats
which are a main cause of large dynamic overloads at wheel/rail contact interfaces.
As far as fatigue effects in the bogie frame and car body are concerned, the
most sensitive issue is fatigue in welded joints. Here again, mechatronics can be
beneficial by reducing service loads thanks to the use of smart suspensions, or sim-
ply by reducing the vehicle mass thanks to a lighter mechanical design enabled by
active suspensions [49, 50]. However, the use of active suspensions may also lead
to increased fatigue loads for the bogie frame and car body. For instance, an active
secondary suspension will introduce additional forces on the bogie frame and car
body and the design of these components will need to consider the effect of these
additional loads.

1.2.3 Ride Comfort
The term ride comfort refers to the effectiveness of the vehicle with ensuring that the
passengers can travel the entire journey without feeling fatigued by the exposure to
vibration caused by the vehicle’s response to track imperfections. Generally, this
term is used to refer to the exposure of passengers to low frequency vibration (in the
range 0–30 Hz approximately), while the term interior noise is used to denote the effect
of car body vibration at higher frequencies.
Despite the relationship between vehicle dynamics and passengers’ well-being
remaining difficult to establish due to its subjective nature and to the effect of envi-
ronmental and even psychological factors, there is a general consensus that ride
comfort is determined by the acceleration to which passengers are exposed. The
quantitative evaluation of ride comfort can be performed according to different
standards, among which ISO 2631 [51] and EN12299 [52] are particularly worthy
of mention. The procedure for ride comfort evaluation consists in measuring car
body acceleration at different locations in the car body, applying a weighting filter to
8 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

consider the different human perception of harmonic components of vibration hav-


ing different frequency, and finally computing one or more quantitative indicators
(normally root mean square values of the weighted acceleration) that can be used to
assess the comfort of passengers.
Mechatronic suspensions can be used to improve ride comfort in a railway vehicle,
enabling a better ride comfort for the same track quality and train speed, or enabling
the train to ride on a track with poorer quality for the same level of comfort. Indeed,
a number of applications of mechatronic suspensions to improve ride comfort have
been proposed and some are in use on vehicles in operational service.
There are two main ways in which an active or semi-active suspension can
improve ride comfort compared to a passive one. Firstly, it is known from the con-
cept of transmissibility which is often used to describe the performance of a vehicle’s
suspension that, in order to isolate the vehicle body from track irregularities, the
viscous damping of the suspension should be as low as possible, at least for excita-
tion falling in a frequency range well above the body’s natural frequency [41, 53].
However, a suspension having too low a damping capability may behave poorly
with certain low frequency features of track geometry, such as gradients, hills, and
bumps. A mechatronic suspension can be used to adapt the amount of damping to the
particular features of track geometry experienced by the vehicle in different running
conditions, or even to introduce a frequency-dependent damping function for the
purpose of ultimately reducing car body acceleration.
Secondly, in modern railway vehicles, a side effect of the use of lighter but more
flexible car bodies is that the resonance frequency of some flexible modes of vibra-
tion of the car body will fall in a frequency range which is relevant to ride comfort.
For instance, the natural frequency associated with the first bending mode of the car
body may fall in a frequency range between 8 and 12 Hz. When the vehicle runs
at particular speeds, the excitation produced by track irregularities on the flexible
modes of the car body is maximized, leading to poor ride quality. Active or semi-
active suspensions are more effective than standard passive suspensions with miti-
gating the effects of car body flexibility, or smart actuators can be used to attenuate
the flexible vibration of the car body.

1.3 STRUCTURE OF THIS BOOK


The following text summarizes the content covered in other chapters of this book:

Chapter 2: Modeling of mechanical systems for mechatronic systems of rail


vehicles requires consideration of the mechanical systems as a separate
entity prior to dealing with a complete simulation modeling of mechatronic
systems. The chapter covers all aspects and steps that should be consid-
ered in terms of advanced modeling of mechanical systems of rail vehicles
starting from classification for theoretical- and experimental-based mod-
eling approaches and finishing not only with the modeling of subsystems
belonging to rail vehicles, but also including the description of approaches
for modeling of wheel/rail contact processes, pantograph-catenary interac-
tion, and track systems. In addition, the chapter provides a background for
Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics 9

the modeling of traction and braking systems as a part of mechanical sys-


tem investigation studies as well as the modeling of inter-train connections
when it is necessary to consider the working of rail vehicle mechanical
systems in various train configurations.
Chapter 3: The designs of electric power transmission systems that are in use
on rail vehicles are covered in this chapter. Detailed descriptions of the
main electric power components, energy storage systems, and machines
are provided in detail. The basic principles of the modeling techniques for
various types of main components are introduced, worked examples are
presented as case studies which are analyzed, and numerical results are
delivered for a bogie level slip control system.
Chapter 4: This chapter is focused on the application of theoretical aspects
of control applicable in mechatronic system designs used in rail vehicles.
The application of two common control systems of open-loop and closed-
loop control systems for mechatronic rail vehicle designs is discussed. The
background and fundamentals are provided as a high-level guidance for
classical and modern control approaches applicable in rail vehicle mecha-
tronic systems. Details of the major area of control method applications in
the railway field are also addressed in this chapter through the provision of
an extensive list of relevant references.
Chapter 5: This chapter is focused on actuators, which play a pivotal role in
mechatronic systems, allowing the implementation of active control. This
chapter aims to present different types of actuators used in mechatronic
railway vehicles, discussing their relative advantages and drawbacks. The
other important aim of the chapter is to introduce mathematical models,
which can be used to consider the effect of actuator dynamics on the design
and performance of a mechatronic vehicle.
Chapter 6: This chapter is focused on sensor designs and applications. Sensors
are used in mechatronic systems to provide the control unit with measured
signals describing the state of the system that can be used to define the
desired control action. Signals measured by sensors can also be used to
monitor the system and to identify the occurrence of faults. Particularly
relevant to mechatronic systems is the measurement of quantities related
to the motion of the system: displacement, velocity, acceleration, and the
measurement of forces and torques. This chapter provides an overview of
sensors frequently used in mechatronic railway vehicles, presenting their
working principles and discussing the relative advantages of different prin-
ciples of transduction.
Chapter 7: This chapter is focused on the complex system modeling tech-
niques and their implementation in a computer environment and software
packages designated for rail vehicle multibody and control system studies.
The co-simulation technique and methodology required for the modeling
of complex systems is described in detail. Two worked examples for utiliz-
ing rail vehicle multibody models with a wheel slip control technique and
an advanced longitudinal train dynamics modeling are provided, and the
delivered results are analyzed and explained.
10 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

Chapter 8: This chapter is focused on the microprocessor computer design


and application aspects for rail vehicle mechatronic systems. Possible rail
vehicle application areas for microprocessor-based systems are reviewed.
The design concepts of different microprocessor computer architectures are
discussed. The chapter also presents a case study for the integration of a
microprocessor-based system for a wagon dynamics condition monitoring
device with the formulation of the power problem and the energy balance
solution being provided.
Chapter 9: This chapter is focused on the description of communication prin-
ciples, architectures, and technologies used in individual rail vehicles and
train consists. The chapter describes major communication architectures
that are currently in use in rail vehicles and contains a review of related rail-
way standards used for enabling communication technologies in rail vehicle
design. The case study presented in this chapter looks at the advancement
in freight train braking possible through the introduction of the end of train
device and the development of a robust train communication network.
Chapter 10: This chapter provides an overview of data acquisition and digital
data treatment in the framework of mechatronic systems. The general con-
figuration of a digital controller is introduced, and the main issues related
with interfacing the digital controller to analog sensors and actuators are
reviewed. Then, the layout of a data acquisition and data processing sys-
tem is presented, describing the role of its main components. The chapter
also provides a non-specialistic review of the problems related to analog-
to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion and to some techniques used to
manipulate digital signals, particularly digital filters and frequency analysis
for digital signals.
Chapter 11: Mechatronic suspensions are one of the most relevant areas
where mechatronics has impacted the design of railway vehicles. Active
or semi-active control can be used to improve ride quality for passengers,
to remove the design conflict between stability and curving which is typi-
cal of passive suspension railway vehicles, and to mitigate the impact of
the vehicle on the track, e.g., reducing rolling contact fatigue and wear in
the rails. This chapter reviews the rationale underlying the use of active or
semi-active suspensions, considering the fundamental distinction between
primary and secondary suspensions, and provides a general overview of the
present state-of-art. Different functions that can be assigned to active and
semi-active suspensions are presented, including steering, vehicle stabili-
zation and guidance, improvement of ride quality, and active tilt. Control
strategies to realize these functions are described and main configurations
for mechatronic suspensions are reviewed.
Chapter 12: Real-time simulations have found wide application for the inves-
tigation of the behavior of complex mechatronic systems. The explanation
on real-time systems and the development of programming code for a real-
time application are discussed in this chapter. The design of mechatronic
systems of rail vehicles requires performing verification and validation in
the real-time mode running on a real-time system The validation tools are
Introduction to Rail Vehicle Mechatronics 11

commonly based on the application of software-in-the-loop and hardware-


in-the-loop simulation approaches. Both approaches require the develop-
ment of a real-time model of the physical system as a part of the design
process. The real-time model of the rail vehicle created in multibody soft-
ware is provided as the case study in this chapter.
Chapter 13: The development of a rail vehicle mechatronic product involves
multiple disciplines, and it results in multiple stakeholders being involved in
the design of the appropriate mechatronic systems. In terms of engineering
capabilities, different types of engineers might be involved in the process
related to the development of a new design or the modification of an existing
design. This chapter discusses the integration concept for multidisciplinary
engineering design tasks and the challenges related to the specific views
on rail vehicle mechatronic system design, and the applicable standards for
design and validation tasks.
Chapter 14: To demonstrate the process of a mechatronic system design and
investigation, four rail application case studies are described in this chapter,
one consisting of a simplified analytical model and the other three being
multi-body simulation cases. The first case study presents a classic 2 degrees
of freedom (DOF) model for a single wheelset with primary suspension
and a 6-DOF linear model of a 2-axle bogie with primary and secondary
suspensions. Both models are based on linearized wheel/rail contact forces
and are designated for defining active control strategies in railway vehicle
mechatronic systems. The second case study describes the development of
an active primary suspension steering system of a rail vehicle for better
dynamic performance on curves. The third case study presented addresses
the development of a heavy haul diesel-electric locomotive model with a
bogie traction control strategy. The fourth case study describes the devel-
opment of a model for an energy storage system of a hybrid locomotive.
Simple mathematical modeling is used in the first case, while the other
cases are modeled with an advanced simulation technique based on the
co-simulation modeling approach between multibody software products
and the Matlab®/Simulink software package.

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2 Modeling of Mechanical
Systems for Rail Vehicles

2.1 INTRODUCTION
Railway vehicles are complex dynamic systems which include components such as
wheels, axles, bogies, carbodies, and suspensions following the laws of mechanics,
but also other components governed by physical laws pertaining to other branches of
physics, particularly electromagnetism (for electric traction units, electromechanical
and electrohydraulic actuators), fluid dynamics (for hydraulic and pneumatic actua-
tors including pneumatic actuation of braking), and thermodynamics (for thermal
traction units). This chapter focusses on the modeling of mechanical components in
a railway vehicle and, together with Chapters 3–6, lays the foundations required for
the modeling of a railway vehicle or a train as a mechatronic system.
Mechanical models of railway vehicles can be used to forecast the vehicle’s
behavior in different running conditions, supporting the design of a new vehicle
and exploring ways to improve the running behavior under different scenarios. The
theoretical foundation for mathematical models of railway vehicles started to be laid
in the late 19th century, with notable contributions from J. Klingel and H. Hertz. The
first modern treatment of wheel/rail contact forces introducing the notion of creep-
age is due to F. W. Carter and dates to the third decade of the 20th century. From the
1950s to the late 1970s, substantial progress was made defining advanced models of
wheel/rail contact that are still in use nowadays. Eminent scholars involved in these
developments were A. D. de Pater, K. L. Johnson, and J. J. Kalker. Meanwhile, the
first numerical models allowing a quantitative study of curving and stability started
to appear. In the late 20th century, multi-body system (MBS) approaches were devel-
oped and applied to railway engineering, leading to the use of more detailed and
complex numerical models. In the past 20 years, MBS models have been further
refined, especially in view of multi-physics simulation and co-simulation, allowing
to incorporate the effect of actuation and control systems, pneumatic suspensions,
pneumatic braking circuits, etc., into MBS models.
Two approaches currently can be used to define a mechanical model of a rail
vehicle. On one hand, relatively simple semi-analytical models can be defined; these
are generally characterized by a reduced number of degrees of freedom (DOF) and
often resort to linearization of the equations of motion for the system. Models of this
kind can be used to obtain a qualitative understanding of vehicle dynamics and of
the effect of design variables on the vehicle’s running behavior. Simple linear models
can also be used for mechatronic systems, such as active suspensions, in the context
of model-based control. On the other hand, more complex numerical models can be
defined using an MBS approach. In this latter case, software packages exist which
enable the user to define and use the model without the need to give regard to writing

DOI: 10.1201/9781003028994-2 15
16 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

and solving the equations of motion; the main task of the user in this case is to choose
a proper level of detail of the MBS model and to validate the model prior to its use.
The aim of this chapter is to provide a concise introduction to the modeling of a
railway vehicle as a mechanical system and clarify the interfaces and relationships
to mechatronic systems being part of the vehicle (e.g., active or semi-active suspen-
sions, traction/braking control). Due to space limitations, some details about the
mathematical formulation of models will be omitted; for this, the reader is referred
to some of the excellent textbooks already existing such as [1–3]. A significant part
of this chapter is allocated to describing models for wheel/rail contact forces, which
are a distinctive feature of rail vehicle models, but again some details are left to other
textbooks focusing on this specific topic.
This chapter starts with the classification of approaches for theoretical and exper-
imental-based modeling of railway vehicles (Section 2.2). A summary of models for
wheel/rail contact is then provided in Section 2.3; this is relevant to the scope of this
chapter because mechatronic systems can be used to enhance the vehicle’s perfor-
mance/ running safety in regard to issues involving the forces arising at the wheel/rail
interface, particularly in regard to vehicle stability, curving, traction, and braking.
In Section 2.4, models of the railway track and of track irregularities relevant to
the study of rail vehicle dynamics are introduced
In Section 2.5 the behavior of passive suspension components in a railway vehicle
is described and needs for complementing or partially replacing passive suspensions
by semi-active or active ones are identified. Section 2.6 provides a short overview of
the pantograph-catenary system and related models. In Section 2.7, the traction and
braking systems of a railway vehicle are described considering different possible
design variants.
In Sections 2.8, 2.9 and 2.10, the effect of train dynamics, pneumatic brakes and
inter-car forces on vehicle dynamics is discussed and models for forces at the buffers
and draw gear are presented.
A practical example for the development and simulation of simple 2 DOF and
6 DOF models of a railway based on the techniques introduced in this Chapter is
presented in Chapter 14 as Case A, while more complex multi-body and multi-physics
models and their use for mechatronic system studies are presented in Chapter 14,
Cases B–D.

2.2 CLASSIFICATION FOR THEORETICAL AND


EXPERIMENTAL-BASED MODELING APPROACHES
Different approaches can be followed to define the mathematical model of a system
like a railway vehicle. In this Section, an outline of modeling approaches is proposed
as an introduction to further development of mathematical models throughout this
book, particularly in Chapters 3–6.
A mathematical model is a quantitative description of the behavior of a physi-
cal system defined using a suitable mathematical language, usually in the form of
a set of equations. The equations describing the mathematical model can be either
ordinary equations or differential equations. For instance, ordinary equations can be
used to describe the steady-state curving behavior of a railway vehicle, while a set
Modeling of Mechanical Systems for Rail Vehicles 17

of differential equations can be used to describe the motion of a vehicle running on


an irregular track.
Mathematical models can be physical-based models, i.e., formulated based on the
laws of physics governing the behavior of the system considered, or can be defined as
black-box models, i.e., mathematical relationships representing the system’s behav-
ior in terms of input-output relationships. A simple, non-exhaustive categorization
of mathematical models based on the basic distinction between physical-based and
black-box models is presented in the sub-sections below.

2.2.1 Physical-Based Models


Physical-based models use the governing laws of physics to describe the system’s
behavior. This can be done using different mathematical instruments such as partial-
derivative differential equations (PDEs), ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and
mixed differential algebraic equations (DAEs). The form of the resulting equations
depends on the features of the system modeled, e.g., the model of a flexible mechani-
cal system may be based on the use of PDEs, while a model consisting of one or more
rigid bodies can be described using either ODEs or DAEs.
Here, we focus on a mechanical system whose motion can be described in terms
of the variation with time of a finite set of independent kinematic coordinates. This
includes all systems formed by rigid bodies, but is also applicable to systems includ-
ing flexible bodies, provided a discretization of the flexible bodies is performed using
modal synthesis and/or the finite element method (FEM). We also assume the system
is subject to holonomic constraints [4]. In this case, the equations describing the motion
of the system, known as the system’s equations of motion, take the general form:

(
M (q )q − Qv + CQT λ = F q , q , u(t ) )
(2.1)
C (q ) = 0

where q is a vector collecting m scalar kinematic coordinates describing the motion


of the system, M ( q ) is the square, m-th order configuration-dependent mass matrix of
the system, Qv is the quadratic velocity vector, describing quadratic inertia terms in the
equations such as centrifugal and Coriolis effects, F is the vector of generalised forces
acting on the system (including internal forces from e.g. suspension components), C
is a vector representing the constraint conditions that the system’s coordinates q shall
satisfy to comply with constraints applied to the system, CQ is a Jacobian matrix repre-
senting the derivative of the constraint vector C with respect to the coordinate vector q
, λ is the vector of Lagrange multipliers representing the effect of constraint forces on
the motion of the system, and u is a vector of time-dependent external inputs exciting
the dynamics of the system, consisting of time-dependent forces/displacements, e.g.,
due to track irregularities.
Equation (2.1) takes the form of a system of DAEs. However, the algebraic condi-
tions C describing the constraints can be used to identify a minimum set of coor-
dinates q with size n < m so that the elements of vector q, called the independent
coordinates, are not subject to any kinematic condition. The size n of vector q is
18 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

called the number of DOFs of the system. It shall be emphasized that, for a given
mechanical system, the choice of the set of independent coordinates is not unique,
but the number of DOFs is uniquely determined. Based on the choice of a minimum
set of coordinates q, and assuming the constraints acting on the system are non-
dissipative (i.e., the virtual work of constraint forces is zero), the system’s equations
of motion can be rewritten in the form:

dm 1 ∂ T
m(q)q +
dt
q −
2 ∂q
( q mq ) = f ( q, q, u(t)) (2.2)

where m ( q ) is the square, n-th order mass matrix of the system, and f is the vector
of generalized forces acting on the system.
The advantage of writing the system’s equations of motion in the form of
Equation (2.1) is that the identification of a minimum set of coordinates is not
required in this case. As a consequence, a general method known as multi-body
system dynamics can be established to write a system of equations of motion in
the form of Equation (2.1). This method is implemented in a number of software
packages (including commercial packages, free software, and research-oriented aca-
demic software), allowing the user to define a mathematical model of a complex
mechanical system, solve the equations for given inputs and initial conditions, and
visualize the results with limited effort. On the other hand, significant effort is gener-
ally required to derive the system’s equations of motion in the form of Equation (2.2)
from the fundamental laws of mechanics, so this approach is generally used for rela-
tively simple mechanical systems and is often performed manually.
In the case where a system of equations in the form of Equation (2.2) is obtained,
a further simplification can be obtained if the motion of the system can be seen as a
small perturbation in the neighborhood of a steady-state configuration, correspond-
ing to a constant value q0 of the independent coordinates. In this case, the equations
of motion can be linearized, i.e., the terms in the equation can be approximated to
Taylor’s series expansions truncated to the first order, resulting in a system of n sec-
ond order linear ODEs with constant coefficients:

mq + cq + kq = bu(t ) (2.3)

where m, c, and k are the (constant, square, n-th order) mass, damping, and stiffness
matrices of the linearized system and b is a constant matrix transforming the inputs
u into a vector of generalized time-dependent forces acting on the system.
In control theory, it is customary to express the linearized system of equations of
motion (Equation 2.3) in the form of a system of 2n first order equations, introducing
a state vector x defined as:
T
x =  q T q T  (2.4)
 

so that Equation (2.3) is rewritten as:

x = Ax + Bu (2.5)
Modeling of Mechanical Systems for Rail Vehicles 19

where A is a square matrix of order 2n called the state matrix of the system. A sec-
ond equation is often used in combination with Equation (2.5), providing a linear
relationship between the system’s state x, the input vector u, and a vector of observed
variables y representing the outputs of the system:

y = Cx + Du (2.6)

Altogether, Equations (2.5) and (2.6) describe the state equations for a linear dynamic
system.
So far, mathematical models were defined in terms of differential equations or
mixed algebraic-differential equations with time t as the independent variable. Models
of this type are said to be time domain models.
Laplace transforms or Fourier transforms can be used to transform a set of ODEs
defined in the time domain to a set of ordinary equations defined in the domain of
the complex-valued Laplace s variable or in the frequency domain, respectively. For
linear systems, this leads to a simple and effective formulation of the mathematical
model in terms of an input-output relationship expressed by a transfer function (TF)
defined in the s variable domain or by a frequency response function (FRF) defined
in the frequency domain. An input-output model can be derived directly from the
state equations of the system using the Laplace or Fourier transform, but can also be
obtained from experimental data, see the next sub-section.
Finally, it may be useful in some cases to formulate the mathematical model in
terms of relationships between the values of variables describing the state of the sys-
tem at discrete time intervals rather than as a continuous function of time, thereby
resulting in a discrete-time model. This is particularly advantageous for use in digital
controllers which operate on signals sampled at discrete time intervals. The equiv-
alent of the Laplace transform for discrete-time models is the Z-transform which
enables to formulate the mathematical model in terms of an input-output relationship
taking the form of a rational function of the complex variable z.

2.2.2 Black-Box Models
Black-box models are meant to describe the system in terms of an input-output
relationship which can be defined in the frequency domain or in the discrete time
domain. To set up a model of this kind, the knowledge of the physical laws governing
the system is not required. The model is instead defined based on the knowledge of
the outputs produced by a given sequence of inputs fed to the system. Inputs and out-
puts can be generated by a complex physical-based mathematical model or measured
from experiments performed on the physical system for which the mathematical
model is defined. In the first case, the black-box model is a simplified model which
is trained and then used to replace the complex physical-based model in cases where
a large number of simulations is required (e.g., Monte-Carlo optimization problems).
In the latter case, the black-box model is an alternative to a physical-based model
and is particularly useful in cases when the system to be modeled is too complex or
partly unknown.
20 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

One way to define a black-box model from an experiment is to measure the inputs
and outputs of the system and to derive from these measurements an estimate of the
system’s FRF. Considering, for the sake of simplicity, a single-input single-output
system (SISO) with input u(t) and output y(t), the estimate of the system’s FRF is
obtained according to one of the following two alternative forms:

GUY
H1 =
GUU
(2.7)
G
H 2 = YY
GUY

where GUU and GYY are the auto-spectra of the system’s input and output signals,
respectively, and GUY is the cross-spectrum of the two signals [5]. The H1 estimate of
the FRF is insensitive to uncorrelated noise on the output, while the H 2 estimate is
insensitive to uncorrelated noise on the input.
Black-box models can also be defined as discrete-time models, i.e., models estab-
lishing a relationship between the values of the input and output variables at discrete
times t − kΔt with k = 0, 1, …, N. These models are called auto-regressive moving-
average (ARMA) models [6] and take the form:

y ( t ) + a1 y ( t − ∆t ) +  + an y ( t − n∆t ) = b0 u ( t ) + b1u ( t − ∆t ) +  + am u ( t − m∆t ) (2.8)

More complex formulations, including, e.g., non-linearities in the input-output rela-


tionship, can also be considered but are not addressed here as they are out of the scope
of this book.

2.3 MODEL OF WHEEL/RAIL CONTACT


The model of wheel/rail contact is a distinctive feature of any mechanical model of
a railway vehicle. Depending on the scope of the overall model, the mathematical
representation of wheel/rail contact can be introduced at different levels of complex-
ity but, in general, some common steps have to be dealt with.
Firstly, for a given position of the wheel relative to the rail, the number and posi-
tion of wheel/rail contact points shall be determined. This first step will be referred
to hereafter as geometric analysis and, depending on the complexity of the approach
followed, may result in determining more than one contact point taking place at the
same time between a single wheel and rail couple. Details about the geometric analy-
sis are provided in the following sub-section.
At each contact point, a common normal direction to the wheel and rail surfaces
and a local tangential plane can be defined. The contact force at each contact point is
then defined as a vector having a component along the normal direction, called the
normal contact force N, and a component in the tangent plane called the tangential
contact force. The tangential contact force is further decomposed into a longitudinal
force Fx parallel to the wheel’s mid-plane and a transversal force Fy perpendicu-
lar to Fx. Furthermore, a moment of the frictional forces acting around the normal
Modeling of Mechanical Systems for Rail Vehicles 21

direction, called the spin moment Mz is present but is often neglected due to its small
effect on the vehicle’s dynamics. The two scalar components Fx and Fy of the tangen-
tial force and the spin moment Mz are called the generalized creep forces. Figure 2.1
shows the different components of wheel/rail contact forces.
The different components of wheel/rail contact forces defined above can be
expressed as functions of the motion of the wheel relative to the rail. This is usually
dealt with in two stages, hereafter called the normal contact analysis and the tan-
gential contact analysis [7, 8]. The normal analysis consists of relating the normal
contact force to the relative motion of wheel and rail surfaces in the normal direc-
tion and determining the size and shape of the contact patch (and optionally the

FIGURE 2.1 Components of wheel/rail contact forces and creepages at wheel/rail contact.
22 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

distribution of the normal pressure in the contact patch). The tangential analysis con-
sists of evaluating the components of the frictional force. If the wheel and rail bodies
can be assimilated to elastic semi-half spaces (and are made of the same material),
the contact problem is said to be quasi-identical [7] which means the normal and
tangential problems are decoupled. In this case, the normal problem can be solved
first and the solution will not depend on the distribution of tangential stresses in the
contact patch. Then, the tangential problem can be solved using as inputs the quanti-
ties obtained from the solution of the normal problem.

2.3.1 Geometric Analysis of Wheel/Rail Contact, Equivalent Conicity


The contact between a railway wheel and a rail takes place in a small region hav-
ing a size of a few square millimeters, called the contact patch. Due to the shape
of the wheel and rail profiles, the position of the contact patch is changing with the
motion of the wheel relative to the rail and, in some cases, multiple contact patches
may occur (multiple contact condition). The problem of determining the number and
position of the contact patches is normally performed considering the wheel and the
rail as rigid bodies, resulting in the determination of single points of contact between
the two bodies and is therefore called the contact point search. Once the position of
the contact point(s) is/are determined, a number of geometrical parameters involved
with wheel/rail contact can be obtained which are relevant to the normal and tan-
gential contact analysis; these parameters include the inclination of the plane tangent
of contact with respect to the top-of-rail plane (contact angle), the difference of the
rolling radius between the two wheels (rolling radius difference RRD), the local
curvatures of the wheel, and rail surfaces at the contact point.
Different algorithms can be used to perform the contact point search, and a sum-
mary of available methods is provided in [9]. In the context of numerical simulation
of the vehicle’s running behavior, a basic distinction can be established between
methods performed offline as a pre-processor of the simulation and methods in
which the contact point search is performed online as part of the calculation of
wheel/rail contact forces at each time step. If the offline approach is followed, the
position of the contact points is computed for different values of the relative lateral
position of the wheelset with respect to the track centerline (and, sometimes, of other
quantities such as the relative yaw angle of the wheelset with respect to the track, or
the track gauge) and the geometric parameters relevant to the calculation of wheel/
rail forces are stored in contact tables which are then interpolated at each time step
of the numerical integration of the model. This approach is more efficient from a
computational point of view than the one resorting to an online contact search but,
to keep the dimensionality of the contact table within reasonable limits, some sim-
plifying assumptions need to be made, e.g., neglecting the effect on the contact point
search of railhead rotation due to the flexibility of rails, the relative rotation of the
wheel profiles due to axle bending, the longitudinal variation of rail profiles, and
sometimes even neglecting track gauge variations along the track.
Figure 2.2 shows an example of the results of an offline contact search for ORE
S1002 wheel profiles and UIC 60 rails with track gauge 1435 mm and 1:40 rail incli-
nation. The upper sub-plots show the position of the contact points on the wheel
Modeling of Mechanical Systems for Rail Vehicles 23

FIGURE 2.2 Top: Position of the wheel/rail contact points for different lateral shift of the
wheelset relative to the rails; bottom: RRD and contact angle diagrams. The results shown
are for ORE S1002 wheel profiles and UIC 60 rails with track gauge 1435 mm and 1:40 rail
inclination.

and rail transversal profiles for different lateral shift of the wheelset relative to the
track, the lower sub-plots show the RRD and contact angles as function of the lateral
shift. The two lower diagrams show sudden variations of the contact parameters at
some values of the wheelset shift which occur due to jumps in the position of the
contact points which are observed in the upper plots. This effect is consistent with
the assumption of rigid profiles in the contact point search and may lead to numeri-
cal disturbances in the numerical integration of the equations of motion for an MBS
model of the vehicle. To avoid this issue, local deformability of the two profiles in
the region close to the contact point can be introduced in a simplified way, resulting
in a smoother transition of the contact point position and in the formation of multiple
contacts between one wheel and the contacting rail.

2.3.2 The Normal Contact Analysis: Normal Force,


Contact Patch, and Normal Stresses
Once the contact points are found, the relationship between the normal contact
force and the contact patch can be determined. Two approaches are possible, known
respectively as rigid contact and flexible contact models. In the rigid contact case,
the contact between the wheel and the rail is treated as a constraint and the normal
force exchanged between the wheel and the rail is obtained from dynamic equilib-
rium equations or from Lagrange multipliers introduced in the MBS formulation [4].
In this case, the normal force is a known input used to determine the shape and size
of the contact patch which is then required to perform the tangential contact analysis.
24 Rail Vehicle Mechatronics

The distribution of normal stresses in the contact patch is normally not required if
the aim of the analysis is just to determine the motion of the vehicle over the track,
but the knowledge of the normal stresses may be of interest if the analysis is also
intended to consider surface damage effects, rolling contact fatigue in particular. If
a flexible contact approach is followed, the normal force is computed as a function
of the kinematic approach of the wheel and rail surfaces in the normal direction,
defined as the inter-penetration of the rigid profiles which is compensated by local
elastic deformability leading to the formation of a contact patch. In this case, wheel/
rail contact is not modeled as a constraint, but rather the normal force becomes a
function of the relative position of the wheel and the rail at the considered time step.
The methods used to study the normal contact do not differ much whether a rigid
or flexible contact model is used. The simplest but still widely used method is Hertz
theory. The assumptions on which Hertz theory is based are:

i. In terms of relationship between normal pressures applied and local defor-


mation, the two bodies in contact behave as elastic half-spaces.
ii. The curvature of the bodies is large compared to the contact size.
iii. The curvature of the surface of the bodies is constant over a region large
enough to enclose the entire contact patch.

Under these assumptions, the contact patch is found to be an ellipse defined by the
value of the two semi-axes a (in the longitudinal direction) and b (in the transversal
direction). For this elliptic patch, an ellipticity parameter g is defined as the ratio of
the length of the two semi-axes:

b
g= (2.9)
a

The formulae defining the parameters a and b as functions of the local curvature of
the contacting surfaces can be found in [8] and in many other books, so they are not
repeated here.
Furthermore, according to Hertz’s theory, the relationship between the inter-pen-
etration δ and the normal force N is expressed as:

3
N = CH δ 2 (2.10)

where C H is a coefficient depending again on the local curvature of the surfaces and
on the Young’s modulus and Poisson ratio of the material.
Finally, the distribution of normal pressure in the elliptic contact patch is defined
by the semi-ellipsoid having the equation:

2 2
3 N x y
p ( x, y) = 1 −   −   (2.11)
2 πab  a   b

where x and y are the coordinates spanning the elliptic contact region.
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“‘Well,’ I say to him, ‘Emelian, you will have to give up drink, do you
hear? you will have to give it up! The next time you return tipsy, you
will have to sleep on the stairs. I’ll not let you in!’
“After this Emelian kept to the house for two days; on the third he
once more sneaked out. I wait and wait for him; he does not come! I
must confess that I was kind of frightened; besides, I felt terribly
sorry for him. What had I done to the poor devil! I thought. I must
have frightened him off. Where could he have gone to now, the
wretched creature? Great God, he may perish yet! The night passed
and he did not return. In the morning I went out into the hall, and he
was lying there with his head on the lower step, almost stiff with cold.
“‘What is the matter with you, Emelian? The Lord save you! Why are
you here?’
“‘But you know, Astafi Ivanich,’ he replied, ‘you were angry with me
the other day; I aggravated you, and you promised to make me sleep
in the hall, and I—so I—did not dare—to come in—and lay down
here.’
“‘It would be better for you, Emelian,’ I said, filled with anger and pity,
‘to find a better employment than needlessly watching the stairs!’
“‘But what other employment, Astafi Ivanich?’
“‘Well, wretched creature that you are,’ here anger had flamed up in
me, ‘if you would try to learn the tailoring art. Just look at the cloak
you are wearing! Not only is it full of holes, but you are sweeping the
stairs with it! You should at least take a needle and mend it a little, so
it would look more decent. E-ch, a wretched tippler you are, and
nothing more!’
“Well, sir! What do you think! He did take the needle—I had told him
only for fun, and there he got scared and actually took the needle.
He threw off his cloak and began to put the thread through; well, it
was easy to see what would come of it; his eyes began to fill and
reddened, his hands trembled! He pushed and pushed the thread—
could not get it through: he wetted it, rolled it between his fingers,
smoothed it out, but it would not—go! He flung it from him and
looked at me.
“‘Well, Emelian!’ I said, ‘you served me right! If people had seen it I
would have died with shame! I only told you all this for fun, and
because I was angry with you. Never mind sewing; may the Lord
keep you from sin! You need not do anything, only keep out of
mischief, and do not sleep on the stairs and put me to shame
thereby!’
“‘But what shall I do, Astafi Ivanich; I know myself that I am always
tipsy and unfit for anything! I only make you, my be-benefactor,
angry for nothing.’
“And suddenly his bluish lips began to tremble, and a tear rolled
down his unshaven, pale cheek, then another and another one, and
he broke into a very flood of tears, my Emelian. Father in Heaven! I
felt as if some one had cut me over the heart with a knife.
“‘E-ch you, sensitive man; why, I never thought! And who could have
thought such a thing! No, I’d better give you up altogether, Emelian;
do as you please.’
“Well, sir, what else is there to tell! But the whole thing is so
insignificant and unimportant, it is really not worth while wasting
words about it; for instance, you, sir, would not give two broken
groschen for it; but I, I would give much, if I had much, that this thing
had never happened! I owned, sir, a pair of breeches, blue, in
checks, a first-class article, the devil take them—a rich landowner
who came here on business ordered them from me, but refused
afterward to take them, saying that they were too tight, and left them
with me.
“Well, I thought, the cloth is of first-rate quality! I can get five rubles
for them in the old-clothes market-place, and, if not, I can cut a fine
pair of pantaloons out of them for some St. Petersburg gent, and
have a piece left over for a vest for myself. Everything counts with a
poor man! And Emelian was at that time in sore straits. I saw that he
had given up drinking, first one day, then a second, and a third, and
looked so downhearted and sad.
“Well, I thought, it is either that the poor fellow lacks the necessary
coin or maybe he has entered on the right path, and has at last
listened to good sense.
“Well, to make a long story short, an important holiday came just at
that time, and I went to vespers. When I came back I saw Emelian
sitting on the window-seat as drunk as a lord. Eh! I thought, so that is
what you are about! And I go to my trunk to get out something I
needed. I look! The breeches are not there. I rummage about in this
place and that place: gone! Well, after I had searched all over and
saw that they were missing for fair, I felt as if something had gone
through me! I went after the old woman—as to Emelian, though
there was evidence against him in his being drunk, I somehow never
thought of him!
“‘No,’ says my old woman; ‘the good Lord keep you, gentleman,
what do I need breeches for? can I wear them? I myself missed a
skirt the other day. I know nothing at all about it.’
“‘Well,’ I asked, ‘has any one called here?’
“‘No one called,’ she said. ‘I was in all the time; your friend here went
out for a short while and then came back; here he sits! Why don’t
you ask him?’
“‘Did you happen, for some reason or other, Emelian, to take the
breeches out of the trunk? The ones, you remember, which were
made for the landowner?’
“‘No,’ he says, ‘I have not taken them, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘What could have happened to them?’ Again I began to search, but
nothing came of it! And Emelian sat and swayed to and fro on the
window-seat.
“I was on my knees before the open trunk, just in front of him.
Suddenly I threw a sidelong glance at him. Ech, I thought, and felt
very hot round the heart, and my face grew very red. Suddenly my
eyes encountered Emelian’s.
“‘No,’ he says, ‘Astafi Ivanich. You perhaps think that I—you know
what I mean—but I have not taken them.’
“‘But where have they gone, Emelian?’
“‘No,’ he says, ‘Astafi Ivanich, I have not seen them at all.’
“‘Well, then, you think they simply went and got lost by themselves,
Emelian?’
“‘Maybe they did, Astafi Ivanich.’
“After this I would not waste another word on him. I rose from my
knees, locked the trunk, and after I had lighted the lamp I sat down
to work. I was remaking a vest for a government clerk, who lived on
the floor below. But I was terribly rattled, just the same. It would have
been much easier to bear, I thought, if all my wardrobe had burned
to ashes. Emelian, it seems, felt that I was deeply angered. It is
always so, sir, when a man is guilty; he always feels beforehand
when trouble approaches, as a bird feels the coming storm.
“‘And do you know, Astafi Ivanich,’ he suddenly began, ‘the leach
married the coachman’s widow to-day.’
“I just looked at him; but, it seems, looked at him so angrily that he
understood: I saw him rise from his seat, approach the bed, and
begin to rummage in it, continually repeating: ‘Where could they
have gone, vanished, as if the devil had taken them!’
“I waited to see what was coming; I saw that my Emelian had
crawled under the bed. I could contain myself no longer.
“‘Look here,’ I said. ‘What makes you crawl under the bed?’
“‘I am looking for the breeches, Astafi Ivanich,’ said Emelian from
under the bed. ‘Maybe they got here somehow or other.’
“‘But what makes you, sir (in my anger I addressed him as if he was
—somebody), what makes you trouble yourself on account of such a
plain man as I am; dirtying your knees for nothing!’
“‘But, Astafi Ivanich.—I did not mean anything—I only thought maybe
if we look for them here we may find them yet.’
“‘Mm! Just listen to me a moment, Emelian!’
“‘What, Astafi Ivanich?’
“‘Have you not simply stolen them from me like a rascally thief,
serving me so for my bread and salt?’ I said to him, beside myself
with wrath at the sight of him crawling under the bed for something
he knew was not there.
“‘No, Astafi Ivanich.’ For a long time he remained lying flat under the
bed. Suddenly he crawled out and stood before me—I seem to see
him even now—as terrible a sight as sin itself.
“‘No,’ he says to me in a trembling voice, shivering through all his
body and pointing to his breast with his finger, so that all at once I
became scared and could not move from my seat on the window. ‘I
have not taken your breeches, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘Well,’ I answered, ‘Emelian, forgive me if in my foolishness I have
accused you wrongfully. As to the breeches, let them go hang; we
will get along without them. We have our hands, thank God, we will
not have to steal, and now, too, we will not have to sponge on
another poor man; we will earn our living.’
“Emelian listened to me and remained standing before me for some
time, then he sat down and sat motionless the whole evening; when I
lay down to sleep, he was still sitting in the same place.
“In the morning, when I awoke, I found him sleeping on the bare
floor, wrapped up in his cloak; he felt his humiliation so strongly that
he had no heart to go and lie down on the bed.
“Well, sir, from that day on I conceived a terrible dislike for the man;
that is, rather, I hated him the first few days, feeling as if, for
instance, my own son had robbed me and given me deadly offense.
Ech, I thought, Emelian, Emelian! And Emelian, my dear sir, had
gone on a two weeks’ spree. Drunk to bestiality from morning till
night. And during the whole two weeks he had not uttered a word. I
suppose he was consumed the whole time by a deep-seated grief, or
else he was trying in this way to make an end to himself. At last he
gave up drinking. I suppose he had no longer the wherewithal to buy
vodka—had drunk up every copeck—and he once more took up his
old place on the window-seat. I remember that he sat there for three
whole days without a word; suddenly I see him weep; sits there and
cries, but what crying! The tears come from his eyes in showers,
drip, drip, as if he did not know that he was shedding them. It is very
painful, sir, to see a grown man weep, all the more when the man is
of advanced years, like Emelian, and cries from grief and a sorrowful
heart.
“‘What ails you, Emelian?’ I say to him.
“He starts and shivers. This was the first time I had spoken to him
since that eventful day.
“‘It is nothing—Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘God keep you, Emelian; never you mind it all. Let bygones be
bygones. Don’t take it to heart so, man!’ I felt very sorry for him.
“‘It is only that—that I would like to do something—some kind of
work, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘But what kind of work, Emelian?’
“‘Oh, any kind. Maybe I will go into some kind of service, as before. I
have already been at my former employer’s asking. It will not do for
me, Astafi Ivanich, to use you any longer. I, Astafi Ivanich, will
perhaps obtain some employment, and then I will pay you for
everything, food and all.’
“‘Don’t, Emelian, don’t. Well, let us say you committed a sin; well, it
is all over! The devil take it all! Let us live as before—as if nothing
had happened!’
“‘You, Astafi Ivanich, you are probably hinting about that. But I have
not taken your breeches.’
“‘Well, just as you please, Emelian!’
“‘No, Astafi Ivanich, evidently I can not live with you longer. You will
excuse me, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘But God be with you, Emelian,’ I said to him; ‘who is it that is
offending you or driving you out of the house? Is it I who am doing
it?’
“‘No, but it is unseemly for me to misuse your hospitality any longer,
Astafi Ivanich; ‘twill be better to go.’
“I saw that he had in truth risen from his place and donned his
ragged cloak—he felt offended, the man did, and had gotten it into
his head to leave, and—basta.
“‘But where are you going, Emelian? Listen to sense: what are you?
Where will you go?’
“‘No, it is best so, Astafi Ivanich, do not try to keep me back,’ and he
once more broke into tears; ‘let me be, Astafi Ivanich, you are no
longer what you used to be.’
“‘Why am I not? I am just the same. But you will perish when left
alone—like a foolish little child, Emelian.’
“‘No, Astafi Ivanich. Lately, before you leave the house, you have
taken to locking your trunk, and I, Astafi Ivanich, see it and weep.—
No, it is better you should let me go, Astafi Ivanich, and forgive me if
I have offended you in any way during the time we have lived
together.’
“Well, sir! And so he did go away. I waited a day and thought: Oh, he
will be back toward evening. But a day passes, then another, and he
does not return. On the third—he does not return. I grew frightened,
and a terrible sadness gripped at my heart. I stopped eating and
drinking, and lay whole nights without closing my eyes. The man had
wholly disarmed me! On the fourth day I went to look for him; I
looked in all the taverns and pot-houses in the vicinity, and asked if
any one had seen him. No, Emelian had wholly disappeared! Maybe
he has done away with his miserable existence, I thought. Maybe,
when in his cups, he has perished like a dog, somewhere under a
fence. I came home half dead with fatigue and despair, and decided
to go out the next day again to look for him, cursing myself bitterly for
letting the foolish, helpless man go away from me. But at dawn of the
fifth day (it was a holiday) I heard the door creak. And whom should I
see but Emelian! But in what a state! His face was bluish and his hair
was full of mud, as if he had slept in the street; and he had grown
thin, the poor fellow had, as thin as a rail. He took off his poor cloak,
sat down on my trunk, and began to look at me. Well, sir, I was
overjoyed, but at the same time felt a greater sadness than ever
pulling at my heart-strings. This is how it was, sir: I felt that if a thing
like that had happened to me, that is—I would sooner have perished
like a dog, but would not have returned. And Emelian did. Well,
naturally, it is hard to see a man in such a state. I began to coddle
and to comfort him in every way.
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘Emelian, I am very glad you have returned; if you had
not come so soon, you would not have found me in, as I intended to
go hunting for you. Have you had anything to eat?’
“‘I have eaten, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘I doubt it. Well, here is some cabbage soup—left over from
yesterday; a nice soup with some meat in it—not the meagre kind.
And here you have some bread and a little onion. Go ahead and eat;
it will do you good.’
“I served it to him; and immediately realized that he must have been
starving for the last three days—such an appetite as he showed! So
it was hunger that had driven him back to me. Looking at the poor
fellow, I was deeply touched, and decided to run into the nearby
dramshop. I will get him some vodka, I thought, to liven him up a bit
and make peace with him. It is enough. I have nothing against the
poor devil any longer. And so I brought the vodka and said to him:
‘Here, Emelian, let us drink to each other’s health in honor of the
holiday. Come, take a drink. It will do you good.’
“He stretched out his hand, greedily stretched it out, you know, and
stopped; then, after a while, he lifted the glass, carried it to his
mouth, spilling the liquor on his sleeve; at last he did carry it to his
mouth, but immediately put it back on the table.
“‘Well, why don’t you drink, Emelian?’
“‘But no, I’ll not, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘You’ll not drink it!’
“‘But I, Astafi Ivanich, I think—I’ll not drink any more, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘Is it for good you have decided to give it up, Emelian, or only for to-
day?’
“He did not reply, and after a while I saw him lean his head on his
hand, and I asked him: ‘Are you not feeling well, Emelian?’
“‘Yes, pretty well, Astafi Ivanich.’
“I made him go to bed, and saw that he was truly in a bad way. His
head was burning hot and he was shivering with ague. I sat by him
the whole day; toward evening he grew worse. I prepared a meal for
him of kvass, butter, and some onion, and threw in it a few bits of
bread, and said to him: ‘Go ahead and take some food; maybe you
will feel better!’
“But he only shook his head: ‘No, Astafi Ivanich, I shall not have any
dinner to-day.’
“I had some tea prepared for him, giving a lot of trouble to the poor
old woman from whom I rented a part of the room—but he would not
take even a little tea.
“Well, I thought to myself, it is a bad case. On the third morning I
went to see the doctor, an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Kostopravov,
who had treated me when I still lived in my last place. The doctor
came, examined the poor fellow, and only said: ‘There was no need
of sending for me, he is already too far gone, but you can give him
some powders which I will prescribe.’
“Well, I didn’t give him the powders at all, as I understood that the
doctor was only doing it for form’s sake; and in the mean while came
the fifth day.
“He lay dying before me, sir. I sat on the window-seat with some
work I had on hand lying on my lap. The old woman was raking the
stove. We were all silent, and my heart was breaking over this poor,
shiftless creature, as if he were my own son whom I was losing. I
knew that Emelian was gazing at me all the time; I noticed from the
earliest morning that he longed to tell me something, but seemingly
dared not. At last I looked at him, and saw that he did not take his
eyes from me, but that whenever his eyes met mine, he immediately
lowered his own.
“‘Astafi Ivanich!’
“‘What, Emelian?’
“‘What if my cloak should be carried over to the old clothes market,
would they give much for it, Astafi Ivanich?’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I do not know for certain, but three rubles they would
probably give for it, Emelian.’ I said it only to comfort the simple-
minded creature; in reality they would have laughed in my face for
even thinking to sell such a miserable, ragged thing.
“‘And I thought that they might give a little more, Astafi Ivanich. It is
made of cloth, so how is it that they would not wish to pay more than
three rubles for it?’
“‘Well, Emelian, if you wish to sell it, then of course you may ask
more for it at first.’
“Emelian was silent for a moment, then he once more called to me.
“‘Astafi Ivanich!’
“‘What is it, Emelian?’
“‘You will sell the cloak after I am no more; no need of burying me in
it, I can well get along without it; it is worth something, and may
come handy to you.’
“Here I felt such a painful gripping at my heart as I can not even
express, sir. I saw that the sadness of approaching death had
already come upon the man. Again we were silent for some time.
About an hour passed in this way. I looked at him again and saw that
he was still gazing at me, and when his eyes met mine he
immediately lowered his.
“‘Would you like a drink of cold water?’ I asked him.
“‘Give me some, and may God repay you, Astafi Ivanich.’
“‘Would you like anything else, Emelian?’
“‘No, Astafi Ivanich, I do not want anything, but I—’
“‘What?’
“‘You know that—’
“‘What is it you want, Emelian?’
“‘The breeches.—You know.—It was I who took them—Astafi Ivanich
—’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘the great God will forgive you, Emelian, poor,
unfortunate fellow that you are! Depart in peace.’
“And I had to turn away my head for a moment because grief for the
poor devil took my breath away and the tears came in torrents from
my eyes.
“‘Astafi Ivanich!—’
“I looked at him, saw that he wished to tell me something more, tried
to raise himself, and was moving his lips.—He reddened and looked
at me.—Suddenly I saw that he began to grow paler and paler; in a
moment he fell with his head thrown back, breathed once, and gave
his soul into God’s keeping.”
Tolstoi
THE LONG EXILE

BY COUNT LEO NIKOLAIEVITCH TOLSTOI

Count Tolstoi, the son of a Russian nobleman, was born in 1828,


so he is to-day an old man. The greatest book that has come out
of Russia is the tragic but intensely lifelike “Anna Karenina,”
published when Tolstoi was forty-seven years old. Much of his
early work is extremely interesting and valuable, for artistic
reasons, but his late years have been devoted almost entirely to
moralising and speculating. A consensus of opinion among
students of Russian literature shows that they consider “The Long
Exile” to be the author’s best short story.
THE LONG EXILE
BY COUNT LEO TOLSTOI
Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. Copyright, 1888,
by Thomas V. Crowell & Co.
“God sees the truth, but bides his time.”

Once upon a time there lived in the city of Vladímir a young


merchant named Aksénof. He had two shops and a house.
Aksénof himself had a ruddy complexion and curly hair; he was a
very jolly fellow and a good singer. When he was young he used to
drink too much, and when he was tipsy he was turbulent; but after
his marriage he ceased drinking, and only occasionally had a spree.
One time in summer Aksénof was going to Nízhni[1] to the great Fair.
As he was about to bid his family good-by, his wife said to him:
“Iván Dmítrievitch, do not go to-day; I had a dream, and dreamed
that some misfortune befell you.”
Aksénof laughed at her, and said: “You are always afraid that I shall
go on a spree at the Fair.”
His wife said: “I myself know not what I am afraid of, but I had such a
strange dream: you seemed to be coming home from town, and you
took off your hat, and I looked, and your head was all gray.”
Aksénof laughed. “That means good luck. See, I am going now. I will
bring you some rich remembrances.”
And he bade his family farewell and set off.
When he had gone half his journey, he fell in with a merchant of his
acquaintance, and the two stopped together at the same tavern for
the night. They took tea together, and went to sleep in two adjoining
rooms.
Aksénof did not care to sleep long; he awoke in the middle of the
night, and in order that he might get a good start while it was cool he
aroused his driver and bade him harness up, went down into the
smoky hut, settled his account with the landlord, and started on his
way.
After he had driven forty versts,[2] he again stopped to get something
to eat; he rested in the vestibule of the inn, and when it was noon, he
went to the doorstep and ordered the samovár[3] got ready; then he
took out his guitar and began to play.
Suddenly a troïka[4] with a bell dashed up to the inn, and from the
equipage leaped an official with two soldiers; he comes directly up to
Aksénof and asks: “Who are you? Where did you come from?”
Aksénof answers without hesitation, and asks him if he would not
have a glass of tea with him.
But the official keeps on with his questions: “Where did you spend
last night? Were you alone or with a merchant? Have you seen the
merchant this morning? Why did you leave so early this morning?”
Aksénof wondered why he was questioned so closely; but he told
everything just as it was, and he asks: “Why do you ask me so many
questions? I am not a thief or a murderer. I am on my own business;
there is nothing to question me about.”
Then the official called up the soldiers, and said: “I am the police
inspector, and I have made these inquiries of you because the
merchant with whom you spent last night has been stabbed. Show
me your things, and you men search him.”
They went into the tavern, brought in the trunk and bag, and began
to open and search them. Suddenly the police inspector pulled out
from the bag a knife, and demanded: “Whose knife is this?”
Aksénof looked and saw a knife covered with blood taken from his
bag, and he was frightened.
“And whose blood is that on the knife?”
Aksénof tried to answer, but he could not articulate his words:
“I—I—don’t—know.—I.—That knife—it is—not mine—”
Then the police inspector said: “This morning the merchant was
found stabbed to death in his bed. No one except you could have
done it. The tavern was locked on the inside, and there was no one
in the tavern except yourself. And here is the bloody knife in your
bag, and your guilt is evident in your face. Tell me how you killed him
and how much money you took from him.” Aksénof swore that he
had not done it, that he had not seen the merchant after he had
drunken tea with him, that the only money that he had with him—
eight thousand rubles—was his own, and that the knife was not his.
But his voice trembled, his face was pale, and he was all quivering
with fright, like a guilty person.
The police inspector called the soldiers, commanded them to bind
Aksénof and take him to the wagon.
When they took him to the wagon with his feet tied, Aksénof crossed
himself and burst into tears.
They confiscated Aksénof’s possessions and his money, and took
him to the next city and threw him into prison.
They sent to Vladímir to make inquiries about Aksénof’s character,
and all the merchants and citizens of Vladímir declared that Aksénof,
when he was young, used to drink and was wild, but that now he
was a worthy man. Then he was brought up for judgment. He was
sentenced for having killed the merchant and for having robbed him
of twenty thousand rubles.
Aksénof’s wife was dumfounded by the event, and did not know what
to think. Her children were still small, and there was one at the
breast. She took them all with her and journeyed to the city where
her husband was imprisoned.
At first they would not grant her admittance, but afterward she got
permission from the chief, and was taken to her husband.
When she saw him in his prison garb, in chains together with
murderers, she fell to the floor, and it was a long time before she
recovered from her swoon. Then she placed her children around her,
sat down amid them, and began to tell him about their domestic
affairs, and to ask him about everything that had happened to him.
He told her the whole story.
She asked: “What is to be the result of it?”
He said: “We must petition the Czar. It is impossible that an innocent
man should be condemned.”
The wife said that she had already sent in a petition to the Czar, but
that the petition had not been granted. Aksénof said nothing, but was
evidently very much downcast.
Then his wife said: “You see the dream that I had, when I dreamed
that you had become gray-headed, meant something, after all.
Already your hair has begun to turn gray with trouble. You ought to
have stayed at home that time.”
And she began to tear her hair, and she said: “Vanya,[5] my dearest
husband, tell your wife the truth: Did you commit that crime or not?”
Aksénof said: “So you, too, have no faith in me!” And he wrung his
hands and wept.
Then a soldier came and said that it was time for the wife and
children to go. And Aksénof for the last time bade farewell to his
family.
When his wife was gone, Aksénof began to think over all that they
had said. When he remembered that his wife had also distrusted
him, and had asked him if he had murdered the merchant, he said to
himself: “It is evident that no one but God can know the truth of the
matter, and He is the only one to ask for mercy, and He is the only
one from whom to expect it.”
And from that time Aksénof ceased to send in petitions, ceased to
hope, and only prayed to God. Aksénof was sentenced to be
knouted, and then to exile with hard labor.
And so it was done.
He was flogged with the knout, and then, when the wounds from the
knout were healed, he was sent with other exiles to Siberia.
Aksénof lived twenty-six years in the mines. The hair on his head
had become white as snow, and his beard had grown long, thin, and
gray. All his gaiety had vanished.
He was bent, his gait was slow, he spoke little, he never laughed,
and he spent much of his time in prayer.
Aksénof had learned while in prison to make boots, and with the
money that he earned he bought the “Book of Martyrs,”[6] and used
to read it when it was light enough in prison, and on holidays he
would go to the prison church, read the Gospels, and sing in the
choir, for his voice was still strong and good.
The authorities liked Aksénof for his submissiveness, and his prison
associates respected him and called him “Grandfather” and the “man
of God.” Whenever they had petitions to be presented, Aksénof was
always chosen to carry them to the authorities; and when quarrels
arose among the prisoners, they always came to Aksénof as umpire.
Aksénof never received any letters from home, and he knew not
whether his wife and children were alive.
One time some new convicts came to the prison. In the evening all
the old convicts gathered around the newcomers, and began to ply
them with questions as to the cities or villages from which this one or
that had come, and what their crimes were.
At this time Aksénof was sitting on his bunk, near the strangers, and,
with bowed head, was listening to what was said.

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