Abstract
The vertical flexural vibrations of railway vehicle carbodies are needed to be reduced from the viewpoint of ride quality. In particular, plural flexural vibration modes - having natural frequencies around 10Hz - are known to have a major impact on ride quality. To reduce these flexural vibrations, this paper proposes a vibration control method using active mass dampers (AMDs). The feasibility of this method was verified by carrying out excitation tests using a test vehicle with existing actuators at the rolling stock testing plant at RTRI. Following this, a more practical AMD system was designed based on numerical analysis and an actual AMD system with two smaller and lighter actuators was developed. The effectiveness of the vibration control using the newly developed AMD system was confirmed by means of excitation tests using an actual vehicle.
