Improved curving performance of an innovative two-axle vehicle: a reasonable feedforward active steering approach

Abstract

A mechatronic rail vehicle with reduced tare weight, two axles and only one level of suspension is proposed with the objective of reducing investment and maintenance costs. A wheelset to carbody connection frame in composite material will be used both as structural and as suspension element. Active control is introduced to steer the wheelsets and improve the curving performance. A feedforward control approach for active curve steering based on non-compensated lateral acceleration and curvature is proposed to overcome stability issues of a feedback approach. The feedforward approach is synthesised starting from the best achievable results of selected feedback approaches in terms of wheel energy dissipation and required actuation force. A set of 357 running cases (embracing 7 curves, 17 speeds per curve and 3 conicities) is used to design the controller. The controller is shown to perform well for conicity and track geometry variations and under the presence of track irregularities.

Cooperation of active steering control of wheelsets with subsystems of an autonomous urban rail vehicle

“…The radius of the curve can be sensed by sensors on the vehicle (automatic rail curvature detection from LiDAR or camera sensed data), or the information can be retrieved from a track database on the vehicle based on the current position of the vehicle on the track. This input variable has been used to control actuators by authors such as Hur et al [10], Stichel et al [11], and for active control of IRWs by Čapek [2]. A commercial application of active wheelset steering designed in this way was presented by CRRC on Cetrovo metro vehicles.…”

A Study of Improving Running Safety of a Railway Wagon with an Independently Rotating Wheel’s Flange

“…Achieving the maximum effect of reducing wheel flange wear intensity and the running resistance in curves is possible by an application of railway wagon bogies with an automatically controlled mechanism for the radial guidance of wheelsets, which works by means of using a mechatronic system [26,27]. The potential benefits that can be achieved in using such a mechatronic system make it an advisable subject for further activities on their development and research [16,17].…”

Contributions of vehicle dynamics to the energy efficient operation of road and rail vehicles

“…An innovative two-axle passenger vehicle for improved curving performance is proposed by Giossi et al [34]. The vehicle has one suspension level only and active steering controlled by a feedforward approach, based on non-compensated lateral acceleration and track curvature.…”

“…The total bogie mass of a train of certain length can be further lowered by reducing the number of bogies, for instance by using articulated bogies and/or using single-axle bogies (e.g. [31] and [34]). But then the axle load will increase for the remaining bogies causing additional wheel and rail damage.…”

“…In [34], cf. subsection 3.3, the short two-axle passenger vehicle has small-size bogie frames in composite material resulting in significant savings in mass.…”