増粘着材噴射を用いた車輪の滑走検知・制御システム

Abstract

A new wheel slide detection and control system is developed for the railway vehicles. Recently, the number of new model vehicles where the anti-lock braking system (ABS) was installed is increasing to prevent the wheel slide that causes increase in the braking distance and damage to the wheel. The ratio of the number of vehicles in which ABS is installed is high in new vehicles, and low in old model vehicles. A new system is proposed to detect wheel slide by two methods, using with the detection of the wheel rotation speed and the difference of the rotation speeds of two wheels. When the wheel slide is detected, ceramic particles are ejected between the front wheels of the foremost bogie and the rails. Ceramic particles increase the adhesion force between the wheel and the rail, and the wheels recover from the sliding condition. The jetting of ceramic particles is monitored by the newly developed particle flow-rate sensor. The effectiveness of the proposed system is verified by the experimental runs using the limited express and the suburban trains. The results show that the wheel slide can be detected at every case and is suppressed within a few seconds. Compared with ABS, the proposed system is simple and less expensive. Thus, the proposed system has large possibility to be installed to wide range of vehicles including the old model vehicles which do not have ABS systems.