Numerical simulation on aerodynamic characteristics of moving van under the train-induced wind

Constructing combined highway–railway bridge brings concerns regarding the aerodynamic interference between train and road vehicle. Research on the interaction mechanism can help calculate the vehicle response for the assessment of travelling safety. In this work, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) verified by a moving model test was applied on researching the aerodynamic characteristics of a moving van under the influence of train-induced wind. Two processes - encounter process (train and van drive towards each other) and chase process (train surpasses the van), are compared. The aerodynamic forces and pressure distribution of the van as well as the flow fields around the vehicles during the interaction are analyzed coherently. The results reveal that the adjacent positive and negative pressure zones around the nose and tail of the train bring moving and centralized high-pressure zone on the van's flank and generate significant aerodynamic variations, each variation contains at least two peak/valley values, and the middle carriage provide a stable transition between. Different superposition effect of the pressure zones results in difference between the encounter process and chase process, the variation trend of drag force and lift in the two processes are similar while the encounter has larger variation amplitude, in terms of pitching moment and yawing moment, more inversions of force happen in the encounter process but the variation amplitude is smaller. When the van runs near the nose of the train in the encounter, it gets the largest variation of drag force, lift force and rolling moment, while the largest variation of yawing moment and pitching moment happens when it runs near the nose of the train in the chase process.