Abstract
For suppression of vertical bending vibration of railway car bodies, the authors have developed a damping control system with variable primary vertical dampers. To put this system into practical use, it is important to detect the failure accurately in case some damper fails. This study presents a method for fault detection of primary vertical dampers by using accelerometers mounted on bogie frames for the vibration control. The proposed method is based on the phase difference of the bounce and the pitch mode vibration of bogie frames. Vibration excitation tests are carried out with a Shinkansen vehicle on a testing plant. The damping force of one of the variable primary vertical dampers is switched to the minimum in order to simulate a failure; the vibration control is applied to the other dampers. The results demonstrate that the fault of one damper could be detected effectively by proposed method.
