Keywords: nonstationary wind, crosswind stability, vehicle dynamics, risk analysis.

Sufficient crosswind stability is an important criterion in the approval process of railway vehicles. Lightweight constructions and high driving velocities increase the risk of crosswind related accidents. For this reason, more and more studies about the stability of vehicles under strong crosswind are being carried out. As a result of the existence of turbulence, wind is a stochastic process. Realistic assumptions on the nature of the crosswind have to take its nonstationary character into account. To assess the stability of the vehicle being affected by a strong crosswind in a more realistic way, a stochastic gust model with nonstationary turbulence based on the NONAR method is proposed in this paper. The crosswind stability of a vehicle running on both straight track and curved track is studied. As the excitation of the vehicle is a stochastic process, a risk analysis has to be carried out and failure probabilities have to be computed. Based on the risk analysis, the influence of vehicle speed and track parameters has been analyzed.

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