Application of Semi-Active Control Strategies in Bogie Primary Suspension System

Primary suspension components of high speed train bogies can affect the vehicle's performance from different points of view, such as wear reduction and increasing forward speed to decrease track access charges. Various types of suspension components, as well as several control techniques, have been developed to amend the cost efficiency of railway operation; with respect to speed, wear, ride comfort, and safety. In the current study, the research overview is laid out with focus on the state-of-the-art, introducing semi-active technology for primary suspension of a bogie for high speed trains. The dynamic behaviour of a one car vehicle model developed in SIMPACK running on various operational scenarios including tangent and curved tracks is considered. The focus is to investigate the effects of passive and different semi-active control strategies on wear. For the passive case, an optimization problem is formulated to find the values of design parameters that guarantee minimum wear in system, while safety and comfort are taken as thresholds. Primary longitudinal and lateral stiffness as well as the primary suspension damper characteristics are chosen as design parameters and genetic algorithm based optimization routine in MATLAB is employed to solve the optimization problems. The attained optimized suspension parameters are applied in a one car railway vehicle model that is developed to be used as a reference case for comparison for the semi-active vibration control techniques. Application of magnetorheological (MR) dampers in the bogie's primary suspension, integrated with several semi-active on-off control strategies, is investigated. The outcomes of this research can amend the cost efficiency of railway operation (especially reduce wear) and give some hints for the design process of adaptive bogies