Fault detection and isolation for an active wheelset control system

Active control for railway wheelsets in the primary suspension has been shown to offer a number of performance gains, and especially it can be used to stabilise the wheelsets without compromising the vehicle's performance on curves. However, the use of actuators, sensors and data processors to replace the traditional passive suspension raises the issue of system safety in the event of a failure of the active control, which could result in the loss of stability (i.e. wheelset hunting), and in more severe cases, derailment. This paper studies the key issue of condition monitoring for an actively controlled railway system, with a focus on actuator failures to detect and isolate failure modes in such a system. It seeks to establish the necessary basis for fault detection to ensure system reliability in the event of malfunction in one of the two actuators. Computer simulations are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method