Basic Study on Active Steering of Railway Vehicle Based on Wheelset Motion

Abstract

In order to reduce the lateral force between wheel and rail during curve negotiation of rail vehicle, some kinds of bogie truck with actively steered wheelsets have been investigated. This paper deals with a basic study about the actively steered truck, which employs a control law based on the self-steering ability of wheelset, measuring the relative yaw angle between the wheelset and the bogie frame. However, this control law helps not only the steering performance, but also the occurrence of running instability. Therefore, two methods are proposed to improve the stability. One is the method that adds the wheelset lateral velocity as the feedback state, and the latter is the one that gives some time lag to the control moment. Both methods are proved to be affective for the stabilization. Here, the latter is more practical because it does not need further measurement. Then, it is also confirmed that the control lag of the latter method does not deteriorate the steering performance under the practical curving condition with track irregularities considering the dynamic characteristics of electro-mechanical actuator.