A simple active carbody roll scheme for hydraulically actuated railway vehicles using internal model control.

Area of Science:

• Railway engineering
• Control systems engineering
• Vehicle dynamics

Background:

• Limited carbody roll is a key challenge in modern railway vehicle design.
• Hydraulically actuated systems offer potential for active roll control.
• Existing control strategies may require complex optimization or lack adaptability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present the first classical internal model control (IMC) design for railway carbody roll control.
• To develop a simplified control approach for hydraulically actuated vehicle body roll systems.
• To evaluate and compare the performance of preview- and nulling-type tilt control strategies.

Main Methods:

• Internal Model Control (IMC) design applied to a hydraulically actuated railway vehicle.
• Model simplification process enabling Proportional-Integral (PI) and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control structures.
• Rigorous performance analysis considering deterministic (curving acceleration) and stochastic (ride quality) metrics.
• Simulations using a nonlinear multibody dynamics model in specialized software.

Main Results:

• The proposed IMC approach facilitates practical PI and PID controller design without complex optimization.
• Preview tilt control, utilizing a tilt command reference, exhibits superior performance.
• Nulling-type tilt control performance is comparable to preview tilt control.
• The study offers a practical tool for rail rolling stock engineers.

Conclusions:

• Classical IMC provides an effective and simplified method for railway carbody roll control.
• Preview tilt control is advantageous due to its use of a reference command.
• The developed methodology offers a valuable contribution to vehicle control design in the rail industry.