Modal Controllers for Active Steering of Railway Vehicles with Solid Axle Wheelsets

T. X. Mei, R. M. Goodall

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a modal control strategy for the active steering of solid axle railway vehicles and reveals benefits of actively stabilizing the wheelsets of a railway vehicle. A modal decomposition is applied to a 2-axle railway vehicle to de-couple its body lateral and yaw motions and hence to allow more detailed analysis of the vehicle behaviour and more robust design of active controllers. Independent controllers for the two motions are developed based on the two de-coupled modes. Parameter variations such as creep coefficients and wheelset conicity are taken into account in the design process to guarantee a robust design. The study shows that, compared to a passive vehicle, the vehicles with actively steered wheelsets not only perform much better on a curved track, but also improve the ride quality on straight track. Computer simulations are used in the study to verify the development of the controllers and assess the system performance with the control scheme proposed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25-41
Number of pages17
JournalVehicle System Dynamics
Volume34
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2000
Externally publishedYes

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Modal Controllers for Active Steering of Railway Vehicles with Solid Axle Wheelsets'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this