Abstract
This paper presents the curving performance of railway vehicles with air suspensions. Air suspensions sometimes cause reduction of wheel load at transition curve, so it is very important to evaluate the performance on transition curve and to control air suspensions properly. In previous study it was found that the air suspensions have non-linear characteristics at low speed and that the performance is influenced by the initial condition, the entrance transition curve condition and so on by computer .simulation and experiments using one-car-modeled test bench. In this study, the new concept devices which have functions to make the link rod of air suspension systems extend or shorten were proposed. The control strategies to compensate the difference of initial condition at the curve entry and prevent the reduction of wheel load at exit transition curve at low speed were also proposed. These proposed control methods were examined by the experiments using one-car-modeled test bench and simulations. As the result, expected performance were obtained so that reduction of wheel load was restraint very much.
