Dynamic Analysis of Railway Vehicle–Track Interaction: Modeling Elastic–Viscous Track Properties and Experimental Validation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper studies the dynamic interaction between railway vehicles and tracks, focusing on the effects of elastic-viscous properties of spring suspensions and track inertia. Dynamic model analysis and experiment test have been conducted. Some comments should be checked and considered:
1.The introduction should highlight the existng gap and challenge.
2.Regarding the scope of this paper is Vehicle-Track Interaction, the result in experiments are more relative to boige, how about the acceleration signal of the rail?
3. Regarding Fig 9， the position of the acceleration sensor is adviced to be tagged and highlighted.
4. Regarding the vehicle-track dynamic model and analysis, some existing research is advice to be discussed, e.g., 10.1080/00423114.2024.2368616.
5. Presentation of figures needs to be improved.
6. The GA shows the rail model just contains the stiffness, not including the damping? While the Elastic-Viscous Track Properties is analysed. Revise it or The reason of this is adviced to be explained.

Author Response

Dear colleagues,
Please allow us to express our sincere gratitude for taking the time to review our work and for your valuable comments aimed at improving our article!

1. We agree with the comment and have made the appropriate additions;
2. The authors plan to study this issue in further research and preparation of the next scientific article, a detailed description of the operation of the track superstructure under a moving load with the presentation of mathematical formulas and their analytical description will further increase the material of our extensive article;
3. We agree with the comment and have made the appropriate additions;
4. We agree with the comment, and the corresponding additions have been made to the text of the article and the list of references [30];
5. We agree with the comment, and appropriate corrections have been made to the design of the drawings;
6. The analysis of the viscoelastic properties of the track was carried out by representing the rail as a lumped-parameter system, in which the rail was considered as a vibrating element. In addition, the study of the track’s viscoelastic behavior employed analytical expressions for the elastic line of a beam resting on a continuous viscoelastic foundation. This approach allowed for the consideration of the inertial and viscoelastic (damping) properties of the track in the analysis of wagon vibrations.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper presents a comprehensive study focused on the interaction of a moving railway vehicle along a railway track with a focus on elastic-viscous properties of the track. The issue is addressed by numerical analysis and supplemented by laboratory experiments to validate theoretical assumptions. Based on data analysis, the authors' team brings a number of interesting specific findings in relation to the considered train speeds and frequency bands.

The article brings new insights beyond the previously published works by both the author's team and other authors. This concerns both the details of the mathematical description of the problem and the conclusions drawn from laboratory tests. I consider the finding that "neighboring wheelset affects the interaction forces and bending moments (by approximately 10%) and, to a greater extent, the rail deflections (up to 20%)" to be a significant new insight.

However, with regard to the precision of the theoretical part, I lack a more specific description of the experiments performed and a serious validation of the data based on a comparison of theoretical assumptions with the data obtained through experiments. It is not clear from the article how the experimental results correlate with the theoretical assumptions and whether the expected validation of the data has occurred. It is desirable to amend and expand Chapter 4 in this way. However, the presented conclusions correspond well to the formulated issues and bring specific knowledge gained.

The list of used sources includes 29 items that appropriately cover the topic addressed and include both older theoretical works and recent findings presented in professional articles. Also included is the patent of roller test bench, which was used for the experimental part of the work.

I have the following comments on the content of the article:

1. Page 6: In the paragraph "In the process …", it is necessary to improve the clarity of some words, abbreviations and expressions ("sil", "TV", "S_B", "tvs", "rail star", "in the lanes").
2. Page 6 and following: The text contains Cyrillic characters (и) in several places.
3. Figure 2: The order of the graphs does not correspond to their labels (a, c, b, e, f, d).
4. Page 10: Fix the character sequence "),),"
5. Page 14 and 15: The extra " character is placed at the end of the paragraph.
6. Page 20: Explain what "The forces SSS..." means.
7. Page 21: Verify the correctness of the reference to Fig. 2 in the text.
8. Page 22-23: Figures 7-14 have a caption in a different font than the rest of the figures in the text.

Author Response

Dear colleagues,
Please allow us to express our sincere gratitude for taking the time to review our work and for your valuable comments aimed at improving our article!

1. We agree with the comment, typos have been corrected;
2. We agree with the comment, typos have been corrected;
3. We agree with the comment, the order of the graphs in Figure 2 has been corrected;
4. We agree with the remark, extra characters have been removed;
5. made corrections to the text of the article;
6. made corrections to the text of the article.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thanks for the authors' effort to reply to the queries or comments.  Comments have been satisfactorily addressed in general.