A Computational fluid dynamics study on the relative motion effects for high speed train crosswind assessment

The effect of the relative motion between a train and the surrounding infrastructure may result in critical scenarios where the infrastructure has a significant effect on the atmospheric wind. This paper analyses using a computational dynamics approach the variation of the aerodynamic force coefficients on the leading vehicle of a high speed train due to the relative motion between the train and the infrastructure. A limited increase (below 10 percent) in force coefficients are calculated and a small decrease (below 7 percent) is observed in the characteristic wind curve computation.