Assessment of Curve Passing Performance and Active Steering Control of Railway Vehicle with Independently Rotating Wheels Using Negative Tread Conicity

Abstract

As an alternative of solid axle wheelset, the independently rotating wheel is widely used in the light rail transit. In order to improve curve passing ability of railway vehicle with independently rotating wheels, a special structure namely independently rotating wheels using negative tread conicity was proposed by the author of this paper. Since the propose of this structure, dynamics analysis based on simplified model has been implemented by means of simulation and scale model experiment. But the precise numerical analysis of railway vehicle with such construction hasn’t been handled under the framework of multibody dynamics analysis to date. Moreover, the active steering control which is expected to improve the curve passing performance further of such kind of railway vehicle has also been rarely reported. To this end, this paper aims at assessing the curve passing performance of both types of railway vehicle with independently rotating wheels, and subsequently the effect of active steering control on railway vehicle with independently rotating wheels using negative tread conicity to serve as the guiding research of full scale vehicle experiment and other expanded studies.