Multimodal Vibration Control of Elastic Vibration of Railway Vehicle Carbody Using Active Mass Dampers (A Method for Making and Updating Analytical Model and Fundamental Test Using Actual Vehicle)

Abstract

Recent light-weighted and structurally-simplified railway vehicle carbodies tend to have complicated three dimensional elastic vibration modes and such vibration modes affect riding quality. In particular, it is known that the mode similar to the first mode of free supported elastic beam (“B mode”) and diagonal distortion mode (“D mode”) whose natural frequencies are around 10Hz are important because 10Hz is known to be a sensitive frequency range for human. In this paper, a method aiming at reducing the two modes (B mode and D mode) simultaneously by using two active mass dampers (AMDs) is suggested, and its feasibility is examined numerically and experimentally. A simple analytical model which can express complicated 3D elastic vibrations of carbody is introduced, and the way to obtain appropriate model parameters is proposed employing genetic algorithm (GA). Using the analytical model including bogies and AMD models, the capability to reduce those two target elastic modes is investigated. A stationary excitation test for a commuter type test vehicle is then carried out using an electro-dynamic exciter. The peaks corresponding to those two target modes are reduced successfully when AMDs are applied in the excitation test.