Thermal effect on dynamic performance of high-speed maglev train/guideway system

Temperature fields and temperature deformations induced by time-varying solar radiation, shadow, and heat exchange are of great importance for the ride safety and quality of the maglev system. Accurate evaluations of their effects on the dynamic performances are necessary to avoid unexpected loss of service performance. This paper presents a numerical approach to determine temperature effects on the maglev train/guideway interaction system. Heat flux density and heat transfer coefficient of different components of a 25 m simply supported concrete guideway on Shanghai High-speed Maglev Commercial Operation Line is calculated, and an appropriate section mesh is used to consider the time-varying shadow on guideway surfaces. Based on the heat-stress coupled technology, temperature distributions and deformation fields of the guideway are then computed via Finite Element method. Combining guideway irregularities and thermal deformations as the external excitations, a numerical maglev train/guideway interaction model is proposed to analyze the temperature effect. The responses comparison including and excluding temperature effect indicates that the temperature deformation plays an important role in amplifying the response of a running maglev, and the parameter analysis results suggest that climatic and environmental factors significantly affect the temperature effects on the coupled maglev system.