Abstract
Air suspension systems are now widely used for the secondary suspension of railway vehicles. To improve the ride comfort of vehicles equipped with this system, the authors developed a semi-active damping control system of air suspension that has a flow control valve with variable orifice between an air spring and an auxiliary air chamber for Shinkansen vehicles. In order to validate the effect of vertical vibration suppression with a single vehicle model, numerical simulations, bench tests for a rolling stock test plant and running tests for a Shinkansen vehicle were conducted. Consequently, the following results were indicated. The numerical simulation using a proposed model of air spring and 5-DOF vehicle model was able to show the effectiveness of vibration suppression. Controlling both the translational vibration mode and pitching vibration mode of car body was effective in order to reduce the vertical vibration of a car body in a frequency range from 1 to 2㎐. In a running test, the system reduced the vertical vibration acceleration PSD peak value (1.4㎐) by almost 40% compared with that of the case of not using this system. Furthermore, this system was able to reduce the vibration of a car body in frequency ranges exceeding 2㎐ according to setting control parameters. In conclusion, this system was effective in reducing the vertical vibration of the Shinkansen vehicle.
