TY - CONF A1 - Romero Navaratte, José A. A1 - Otremba, Frank T1 - Scientific Society of Mechanical Engineers N2 - The efficiency and safety of railway transportation depends on many factors and operating conditions, associated to the vehicle, the infrastructure, the operator and the environment. From the vehicle-infrastracture perspective, some influential factors include the dynamics of the vehicle and infrastructure interaction when the vehicle operates on curved tracks. Düring such changes of direction, the vehicle dynamically responds to the lateral perturbation, producing a lateral load transfer that represents an increase of the wheel forces on one side of the track, as a function of the train operating conditions and track design, including track's geometry and over-elevation, and vehicle's operating speed as well as its inertial properties and dimensions. In this context, the lateral load transfer superimposes to tangential steering forces, which are developed when the vehicle enters the curved track, and stabilize once a steady state is attained if the vehicle travels along a constant radius track at constant speed. The magnitude of such tangential forces depends on a variety of factors, including the yaw stiffness of the bogie, and the friction at the centre plate. While the friction at the centre plate generates higher tangential forces on the track and a consequential greater rail wearing and lose of locomotive energy, such friction is also crucial to avoid the hunting phenomenon when the vehicle travels along tangents. In this paper, a mechanically active centre plate is proposed, which increases the friction torque at the centre plate when the vehicle travels along tangents, and reduces such a friction torque when the vehicle negotiates curved portions of the track. Such conceptual design includes the principles of Operation and a needed preliminary experimental model to assess the potential benefits as well as the feasibility of such equipment. T2 - 11th international conference on railway bogies and running gears CY - Budapest, Hungary DA - 09.09.2019 KW - Centre plate KW - Railway KW - Fiction PY - 2019 SP - 28 EP - 30 AN - OPUS4-49004 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -