Electromagnetic Guidance Control System of Rail Vehicle Driven by Linear Motor.

Abstract

We are now making research and development efforts on a new railway system which is driven by linear motors, supported by iron wheels, and guided by electromagnets. The guidance force is produced by electromagnetic attraction between on-board electromagnets and track-side guide rails. As one step in the development, we examined the performance of the electromagnetic guidance control system by using a rotary disc type experimental facility. Frictional force between the supporting iron wheel and rail may affect the guidance control system as disturbance. To compensate for the non-linearity and modeling errors of the frictional force, we introduced a disturbance observer and feed forward control method. Kalman filter which estimates state variables was also used with LQI control to obtain satisfactory performance. This paper presents the system configuration and experimental results.