ABSTRACT

Active vibration damping of a railway car body is accomplished by actuator forces acting directly on
the Flexible car body structure. In this work piezo-stack actuators mounted in consoles are utilized to

introduce bending moments into the flexible structure,thus achieving a significant increase in ride

comfort. For a heavy metro vehicle the complete design of the active vibration damping system is

presented. Analytic modelling, system identification, and robust controller design are presented. The

excellent performance of the proposed method is documented by both extensive experimental

results and co-simulation studies.
 1. INTRODUCTION

One ofthemanydesignaspectsofmodernrailwayvehiclesis to
ensuregoodridequalitybyreducingthevibrationamplitudes

of thecarbodywhicharetypicallypresentinlight-weight

structures.Theexcitationofthesevibrationsismainlycausedby

geometrictrackirregularitieswhichgeneratevaryingwheel-rail

contact forces.Theconventionaldesignapproachistominimize

the propagationofthedynamicwheelforcestotheelasticcar

body.Thisisusuallyachievedbyacarefuldesignofthesecondary

suspension inverticalaswellastransversaldirection.Insteadof

this passivesolution,activecontrolconceptscanbeemployedto

generateanactiveorsemi-activesecondarysuspensionsystemThere,due

to themassofarailwaycarbody,largeactuatorsandconsiderable

powerconsumptionaremajordrawbacks.Moreover,anyactive

conceptwhichdirectlyactsonthesuspensionmayaffectthe

safety ofthevehicleagainstderailment.Anothersolutionto

reduce thedynamicwheel-railcontactforcesareactivesteering

strategies(Mei, Nagy,Goodall,&Wickens,2002), butthisconcept

can onlymarginallyalleviatetheaccelerationsinverticaldirec-

tion. Allthesemethodsmaybereferredtoasvibrationisolationmethods,
sincetheirmaintaskistoreduceexcitationforcesgeneratedbytrackirregularities.

A novelmethodforvibrationreductionistheapplicationofan

activecontrolsystemdirectlytotheflexiblestructureofthe

railwaycarbodyinordertoattenuatetheelasticvibrations