Preliminary studies on transition curve geometry: Reality and virtual reality

Abstract

The topic of transition curves is well known in track and road engineering. Over the years the need for easement between straight and curved sections in railway and road design has grown, with an important reason being increase in vehicle speed. Testing of transitions is often done with graph analysis where the property of lateral change of acceleration is compared between varieties of curves. However, graph analysis does not give a clear understanding of the behaviour of a vehicle in a transition phase the way, for instance, field or laboratory experiments might do. In this paper we present an initial study on the behaviour of a down-scaled vehicle model driving through three distinct transitions from straight to curved sections. In addition we show a comparison of the physical model against a virtual model.