Suppression of Vertical Vibration in Railway Vehicle Carbodies Through Control of Damping Force in Primary Suspension: Presentation of Results From Running Tests With Meter-Gauge Car on a Secondary Line

Abstract

To improve vertical ride comfort in railway vehicles, the suppression of vertical bending-mode vibration and rigid-body-mode vibration in the carbody is essential. Primary suspension damping control systems, designed to reduce bending mode vibrations in carbodies for high-speed trains, have been proposed in the past. These systems consist of variable vertical dampers affixed to the primary suspension, accelerometers attached to the bogie frames, and a controller. Results from vehicle running tests carried out on a number of Shinkansen lines demonstrated that these systems reduced the power spectral density (PSD) peak value of vertical carbody vibration accelerations in the first-bending-mode by 80 per cent compared to when the system was not used. This paper reports on the application of this system to a meter-gauged vehicle. Vehicle running tests were carried out on a secondary meter-gauge line at moderately high running speeds (about 100 km/h or lower). Test results showed that the system reduced the PSD peak of vertical vibration accelerations stemming from bending-mode vibrations of the carbody by almost 90 per cent thanks to an LQG controller tuned for reducing bending-mode vibrations. When vehicles run at low speed (about 60 km/h) on secondary lines, the rigid-body-mode vibrations of the carbody in the 1-2 Hz frequency range tend to increase from time to time. The system was therefore also applied to reduce these vibrations. Results from vehicle running tests applying the LQG controller that had been re-tuned for reducing rigid-body-mode vibrations, showed that the PSD peak in vibration accelerations at 1.2 Hz was reduced by half.

Active suspension in railway vehicles: a literature survey

“…Active systems aimed at improving ride comfort are typically installed in the secondary suspension, but there are examples where active control in primary suspension is proposed to attenuate the vibration of the car-body. A recent work shows that semi-active vertical primary suspension has potential to reduce car-body first bendingmode vibration [27]. Although this belongs to active primary suspension technically, the control strategy and implementation status are described in Sects.…”

“…4.2.3, a Shinkansen vehicle was tested recently on a roller rig and in the line. Field tests were carried out on a line having a relatively poor track quality, to verify the effectiveness of the scheme [27,39,89]. The semi-active primary suspension can selectively reduce the vibration of the first bending mode of the car-body, and with tuned LQG controller, the rigid car-body motions can also be attenuated to some degree.…”

Testing the Effectiveness of the Anti-Bending Bar System to Reduce the Vertical Bending Vibrations of the Railway Vehicle Carbody Using an Experimental Scale Demonstrator

“…Active, semi-active and passive systems have been proposed to improve the ride comfort to vertical vibration in passenger coaches [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. They are designed either to isolate the carbody from vibrations using active/semi-active suspension [10][11][12], or to reduce the structural vibration of the carbody through the damping provided by the active/passive suspension [13][14][15][16][17].…”

Semi-Active Vibration Control of Train Suspension Using Optimized PID Controller

“…Active and semi-active vertical actuators have been used in conjunction with suspension springs to reduce and control the vertical vibrations of the train bogie. Skyhook and linear quadratic gaussian (LQG) control strategies are applied and compared to control primary vertical suspension [8]. The primary suspension is mainly for guiding the vehicle, and the secondary suspension is intended to enhance the vehicle's ride quality [9].…”