Control Design for the Active Stabilization of Rail Wheelsets

Abstract

Through a detailed control assessment of a conventional railway wheelset, this paper addresses some of the key design issues in the development of active primary suspensions for the stabilization control of railway vehicles. It reveals the basic feedback requirements for achieving adequate stability and hence provides a useful insight of how active controllers may be structured. For the control design, a number of factors in addition to the stabilization are considered including the actuation requirements, creep forces at the wheel-rail contact, track following as well as robustness against parameter variations. Based on the outcome of the control analysis, the study proposes a design and optimization procedure for the development of active wheelset control. The design method is applied to a two-axle vehicle in a case study, which shows that the new design approach is advantageous when compared with other design methods previously studied.