A201 Tilt Control System for Railway Vehicles Using Air Springs

Abstract

In recent years, there has been growing needs to improve maximum speed on curved tracks. For this purpose, there are many tilting systems. However, vehicles that have special tilting mechanism, are much different from the ordinary ones and expensive. Thus we have developed a tilt control system that is constituted from the ordinary car body and bogie truck with less remodeling. Therefore the maximum tilting angle of this system is restricted to 2 degrees. This system mainly consists of a Controller, Air supply valves, Exhaust valves and Height sensors. The control method is programmed. The tilting operation is performed by the controller, which all data of the curved tracks have been memorized. The location of the vehicle is measured by the tachometer generator and the devices (ground coil) that are attached on the sleeper in order to correct running position. From several running test results, we confirmed that stationary lateral acceleration of car body was reduced by tilt control. The running stability and riding comfort was also adequate so the vehicle equipped with this system could run rapidly than the vehicle with the former restricted speed limit on curved track.