Abstract
Active wheelset steering as well as wheelsets with independently rotating wheels together with individually controlled wheel drives has already been several times presented as a promising approach for railway vehicles of the future. Such concepts can offer superior properties over the conventional, passive, solutions in terms of wheel and rail wear, ride comfort, vehicle mass and mechanical design complexity etc. Scaled roller rig experiments are an outstanding possibility to verify and demonstrate results of computer simulations of such concepts without too high costs and safety risks. This paper describes the design of 1 to 3.5 scaled experimental railway bogie capable to test a wide range active wheelset control approaches on a roller rig. Each wheelset is equipped by an actuated steering mechanism capable of applying a controlled torque to the wheelset in the yaw direction, or to steer wheelset to desired magnitude of yaw angle between the wheelset and the bogie frame. Moreover each wheel is driven by an individually controlled wheel drive. Besides standard displacement, acceleration and force sensors, the bogie is equipped by newly developed strain gauge based system for measuring axlebox forces in all three directions. The design of the newly developed bogie frame, wheelsets, wheelset steering mechanism, wheel drives and system of axlebox forces measurement are described in detail.
