Semi-active control to reduce carbody vibration of railway vehicle by using scaled roller rig

Abstract

As train operating speeds increase, upgrading the performance of the railway vehicle has been required. To improve the ride comfort related to vibration, researches to replace the conventional passive suspension with (semi)active suspension have been carried out. For the purpose of vibration reduction, the magneto-rheological (MR) damper has been widely applied in automobile or anti-vibration areas, but it hasn’t yet been applied to railway vehicles. In this study, skyhook control with the MR damper was applied to the 1/5 scaled railway vehicle model on roller rig to suppress the lateral vibration of the carbody. For the 1/5 scaled prototype model of the railway vehicle, the dimensions of railway vehicle were scaled down by similarity method. Both numerical analysis and experiments to control the carbody lateral vibration were conducted and compared. The possibility of improving both the ride comfort and running stability of the railway vehicle by using the semi-active control was discussed in detail.