Estimation of Vertical Track Irregularity Based on Extended Kalman Filter

Abstract

Track irregularity is the main factor that influences vehicle running stability and passenger riding comfortableness, so monitoring the status of track irregularity in time is of great significance to ensure the operation safety. To estimate the track irregularity in wide wave bands which can hardly be detected by a single inertia, a method based on multi-inertia observation and extended Kalman filtering was proposed. At first, Recursive Jacobi matrix is calculated according to the vehicle-track coupling state-space equation. Then, the optimal state estimation is obtained combining the result with the linear observation equation. Finally, the simulation experiment under the track irregularity excitation is carried out on the MATLAB platform. Applying the proposed method to the simulated data, the vertical track irregularity can be estimated. The results show that the method can effectively estimate track irregularity with advantages such as high accuracy and good robustness.