Robust control and actuator dynamics compensation for railway vehicles

Abstract

A robust controller is designed for active steering of a high speed train bogie with solid axle wheel sets to reduce track irregularity effects on the vehicle's dynamics and improve stability and curving performance. A half-car railway vehicle model with seven degrees of freedom equipped with practical accelerometers and angular velocity sensors is considered for the H ∞ control design. The controller is robust against the wheel/rail contact parameter variations. Field measurement data are used as the track irregularities in simulations. The control force is applied to the vehicle model via ball-screw electromechanical actuators. To compensate the actuator dynamics, the time delay is identified online and is used in a second order polynomial extrapolation carried out to predict and modify the control command to the actuator. The performance of the proposed controller and actuator dynamics compensation technique are examined on a one-car railway vehicle model with realistic structural parameters and nonlinear wheel and rail profiles. The results showed that for the case of nonlinear wheel and rail profiles significant improvements in the active control performance can be achieved using the proposed compensation technique.

Bulletin of the Polish Academy of Sciences: Technical Sciences

“…Active control strategies, including PID control [24], model predict control [25] and active disturbance rejection control [26,27], are commonly used control strategies. Semiactive control strategies, including optimal control [28,29], sliding mode control [30,31], fuzzy control [32] and robust control [33], are also commonly used control strategies. Compared with active control structure, semi-active control structure has the advantages of simple form and low energy consumption.…”