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Anna Orlova
David Cole Editors
Advances in
Dynamics
of Vehicles on Roads
and Tracks II
Proceedings of the 27th Symposium
of the International Association
of Vehicle System Dynamics,
IAVSD 2021, August 17–19, 2021,
Saint Petersburg, Russia
Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering
Series Editors
Fakher Chaari, National School of Engineers, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia
Francesco Gherardini , Dipartimento di Ingegneria “Enzo Ferrari”, Università di
Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
Vitalii Ivanov, Department of Manufacturing Engineering, Machines and Tools,
Sumy State University, Sumy, Ukraine
Editors
Advances in Dynamics
of Vehicles on Roads
and Tracks II
Proceedings of the 27th Symposium
of the International Association of Vehicle
System Dynamics, IAVSD 2021,
August 17–19, 2021, Saint Petersburg, Russia
123
Editors
Anna Orlova David Cole
Emperor Alexander I Saint-Petersburg Department of Engineering
State Transport University University of Cambridge
St. Petersburg, Russia Cambridge, UK
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Preface
This volume contains the official proceedings of the 27th IAVSD Symposium on
Dynamics of Vehicles on Roads and Tracks, which took place on August 17–19,
2021, at the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State Transport University in
Saint-Petersburg, Russia. In 2021 due to COVID-19 ongoing pandemic, the
Symposium was organized in online format.
The main objective of the International Association for Vehicle System
Dynamics (IAVSD, see www.iavsd.org) is to promote the development of, and
applications in the field of ground vehicle system dynamics. The IAVSD
Symposium on Dynamics of Vehicles on Roads and Tracks is a leading interna-
tional symposium bringing together researchers, scientists and engineers from
academia and industry to present and exchange their latest ideas and results. These
biennial symposia, held at various locations around the world, have contributed
greatly to a better understanding of ground vehicle system dynamics-related
problems.
The organizers of the 27th Symposium were the Department of Railway Cars
and Railcars’ maintenance at the Emperor Alexander I St. Petersburg State
Transport University, Scientific Center “Vagony”, All-Union Research and
Development Center for Transportation Technology (Saint-Petersburg, Russia), all
being organizations working in the field of rail vehicle dynamics.
The symposium was attended by 235 delegates from 20 countries and five
continents (Asia, Australia, Europe and North America). Most participants joined
the symposium from China (41), Sweden (36), Japan (24), UK (21), Germany (20),
Italy (20), Austria (19), France (9), Australia (9), Russia (8) and USA (8). Each day
of the symposium started with a plenary session and an invited state-of-the-art
presentation (40 minutes). These state-of-the-art papers have been published in the
journal Vehicle System Dynamics (Taylor & Francis), volume 59, issue number 7
(July 2021) and may be accessed at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/nvsd20/59/7
(free access until February 2022). The presentations were divided into four parallel
sessions with various themes on road and railway vehicle dynamics.
v
vi Preface
In total, 233 abstracts were submitted, after review by the International Scientific
Committee 155 were accepted for Oral or Poster Presentations. There were 35
Poster Workshop presentations (20 on Road, 15 on Rail) plus a Workshop on the
Results and Outcome of the Switches & Crossings Benchmark 2020. Out of those,
after peer review by the members of International Scientific Committee and orig-
inality check, 118 full papers were selected for publication in this book, which
represents the official conference proceedings.
We expect that this volume of the Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering,
published by Springer Nature, will serve as a timely reference guide and a source of
inspiration for scientists and engineers in the field of ground vehicle system
dynamics.
The Local Organization Committee was composed of Anna Orlova, Yuri
Boronenko, Alexander Tretyakov, Vladislav Zakharov, Tamara Chirkova, Yulia
Strelchenya, Igor Kiselev, Olesya Gimazetdinova, Tatyana Antonova, Ekaterina
Narkizova, Alexander Vorobyov, Tatyana Belgorodtseva and Andrey Velichko.
The symposium was supported by the professional conference software IVA with
Andrey Velichko, Anfisa Dauksha, Boris Poliakov, Ekaterina Poliakova, Artem
Gusev, Maksim Panchenko and Anastasia Kabanova being the session moderators.
We would like to thank the members of the IAVSD 2021 International Scientific
Committee, the members of the IAVSD 2021 Local Organizing Committee, and all
the 235 delegates for making IAVSD 2021 a success.
Program Chairs
Anna Orlova United Wagon Company, Russia
David Cole University of Cambridge, UK
vii
viii Organization
ix
x Contents
Road: Suspension
Data-driven Modeling Approach for Control Design of a Variable-
Geometry Suspension System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
Dániel Fényes, Balázs Németh, and Péter Gáspár
Kinematic Versus Elasto-Kinematic Model of a Twistbeam
Suspension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
Abel Arrieta Castro and Georg Rill
Contents xv
Road: Motorcycles
Motorcycle Multibody Models for eCall Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053
Matteo Bova, Matteo Massaro, and Fabio Mazzarella
Investigations of Motorcycle Mid-Corner Instability Using a Three
Degree-of-Freedom Minimal Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1062
Alexander E. Schramm, Luca Leonelli, and Silvio Sorrentino
Modeling of the Vertical Dynamics of a Kick e-Scooter on Distributed
Road Irregularity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1070
Michele Asperti, Michele Vignati, and Francesco Braghin
Motorcycle Driveline Stability in a Minimal Model Including Roll
Angle During a Braking Maneuver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081
Alexander E. Schramm, Luca Leonelli, and Silvio Sorrentino
Comparison of FWS and RWS for Personal Mobility Vehicle (PMV)
with Active Tilting Mechanism on Obstacle Avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1090
Tetsunori Haraguchi, Tetsuya Kaneko, and Ichiro Kageyama
Electric Scooter Dynamics – From a Vehicle Safety Perspective . . . . . . 1102
Florian Klinger, Manuel Klinger, Johannes Edelmann, and Manfred Plöchl
One-Dimensional Thermal Model and Temperature Estimation for a
MotoGP Class Motorcycle Carbon Brake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1113
Federico Bonini, Gionata Manduchi, Nicolò Mancinelli,
and Alberto Martini
Contents xix
Yu Sun1,2(B) , Jinsong Zhou2 , Dao Gong2 , Taiwen You2 , and Qiushi Wang2
1 Postdoctoral Station of Mechanical Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
1410745@tongji.edu.cn
2 Institute of Rail Transit, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China
1 Introduction
Vibration has a negative effect on high-speed trains. Improving the ride quality and
providing a better ride experience to passengers is the goal of vibration control research of
carbody. Dynamic vibration absorber (DVA) [1–3] is a classical passive control element,
which is widely used in bridge, aviation and other engineering fields. Recently, some
scholars use the control mechanism of DVA to suppress the vibration of the rail vehicle
system. Gong et al. [4] proposed to design an underframe device as a DVA of the
vehicle body to suppress the elastic vertical bouncing vibration of the carbody. By the
same principle, a method of multi-mode vibration control for carbody by using the on
board and suspended devices as DVAs was studied [5]. Takahiro et al. [6] designed the
longitudinal vibration of the frame as a DVA for the vertical bending vibration of the
carbody. It proved that the method can effectively reduce the vibration of the carbody
by numerical simulation analysis and experimental research. Shi et al. [7] modeled
the carbody as an Euler-Bernoulli beam and apply DVA theory to restrain the elastic
vibration of carbody for high-speed electric multiple unit. The advantage of elastic
vibration suppression method was verified by a laboratory test on the full-scale test rig.
Ref. [8] proposed a two-degree-of-freedom DVA under high-speed carbody to absorb
the bouncing and pitching vibration of the carbody. Based on Ref. [8], this research
further proposed a multi-degree of freedom DVA (MDOF DVA) that uses one object to
simultaneously absorb multiple degrees of freedom of vibration of carbody.
M Ÿ + C Ẏ + KY = Dw Yw (1)
where M, C and K are the mass matrix, damping matrix and stiffness matrix of the
vehicle system, respectively. Dw strands for excitation input matrix, and Y w strands for
the track irregularity.
Track irregularity is the main input excitation of the vehicle system during the oper-
ation of the high-speed train. Track irregularity excitation is input to the vehicle system
through the wheelsets, and there is a time delay between each wheelset. The acceleration
power spectral density (PSD) of each DOF is applied to evaluate the vibration of the
carbody for investigating the vibration absorption performance of MDOF DVA. The
calculate method is
S = ω4 ψY ∗ Y T ψ T (2)
where (·)∗ strands for conjugate matrix, (·)T strands for transpose matrix, S is the accel-
eration PSD of each DOF of the carbody, ψ is a coordinate transformation matrix. Y is
related to vehicle system parameters, excitation input matrix and input time delay. The
expression of Y is
−1
Y = −ω2 Mt + jωCt + Kt Dw Td SFF (ω) (3)
Multi-degree of Freedom Dynamic Vibration Absorber of the Carbody 5
where Dw is excitation input matrix, Td is input time delay matrix, SFF (ω) is the PSD
of track irregularity. The high-speed track irregularity is adopted in the model [9], the
vertical and lateral PSD of which are as follow:
Av c
Sv ()= 2 (4)
+2r 2 +2c
Aa c
Sa ()= 2 (5)
+2r 2 +2c
Genetic algorithm is utilized to optimize the parameters of the MDOF DVA. Considering
that the installation height of the DVA is usually close to the bottom of the carbody, the
installation height parameter hsee can be set to a constant value. Limited by installation
space, the half of the longitudinal lex and lateral spans l ey and the installation stiffness
k ex , k ey , k ez of the three directions need to set a constraint range. The optimize objective
function and constraints can be set as
5
min g(x) = βi · max(Si )
i=1 (2)
hsee = 0.3, 2 ≤ lex ≤ 6, 0.8 ≤ ley ≤ 1.6, 104 ≤ kex ≤ 107 ,
s.t.
104 ≤ key ≤ 107 , 104 ≤ key ≤ 107
where S i strands for the power spectrum density (PSD) of each DOF of the carbody, βi
is weight coefficient.
The optimized natural vibration frequency and the installation parameters of the
MDOF DVA can be obtained according to the optimization steps as shown in Table 1(a)
and Table 1(b), respectively.
The acceleration PSD of the carbody by numerical calculation that adopted the
optimized MDOF DVA is shown in Fig. 2. The acceleration PSD of the carbody without
DVA is added in the figure as comparation analysis. In the simulation, the installation
damping ratio of the DVA is set as 0.06. Figure 2 (a) and (b) illustrate that after the MDOF
DVA applied, the maximum of the lateral motion and bouncing acceleration PSD change
from one to two equal values, indicating that the lateral motion and bouncing modes are
achieved the optimal vibration absorption. The maximum of the lateral motion decreases
by 92.2%. The maximum of the bouncing mode decreases by 84.6%. It can be seen from
Fig. 2 (c) that the rolling vibration mode has a certain vibration absorption effect, but it
is not optimal. This is because the rolling vibration is coupled with lateral motion, which
makes it difficult to optimize both at the same time. Figure 2 (d) demonstrates that the
pitching vibration is well suppressed. Combined with all the figures in Fig. 2, it can be
Multi-degree of Freedom Dynamic Vibration Absorber of the Carbody 7
found that the MDOF DVA can absorb multiple vibration modes of the carbody at the
same time, and some of them can achieve optimal vibration absorption.
4 Conclusions
In this paper, a MDOF DVA is proposed to suppress the rigidity vibration of high-
speed trains. A high-speed train dynamic model is established, and a MDOF DVA that
simultaneously absorbs the lateral motion, bouncing, rolling, pitching and yawing vibra-
tions is designed. The lateral motion, bouncing and pitching can achieve the best vibra-
tion absorption performance at the same time. The results show that MDOF DVA can
effectively absorb the rigid vibration of the carbody.
References
1. Seto, K.: Dynamic Vibratin Absorber and its Applications. Machine Press, Beijin (2013)
2. Thompson, D.J.: A continuous damped vibration absorber to reduce broad-band wave
propagation in beams. J. Sound Vib. 311(3–5), 824–842 (2008)
3. Ren, M.Z.: A variant design of the dynamic vibration absorber. J Sound Vib. 245(4), 762–770
(2001)
4. Gong, D., et al.: On the resonant vibration of a flexible railway car body and its suppression
with a dynamic vibration absorber. J. Vib. Control 19(5), 649–657 (2013)
5. Gong, D., et al.: Method of multi-mode vibration control for the carbody of high-speed electric
multiple unit trains. J. Sound Vib. 409, 94–111 (2017)
6. Tomioka, T., Takigami, T.: Reduction of bending vibration in railway vehicle carbodies using
carbody-bogie dynamic interaction. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 48(sus1), 467–486 (2010)
7. Shi, H., Luo, R., Wu, P., Zeng, J., Guo, J.: Application of DVA theory in vibration reduction
of carbody with suspended equipment for high-speed EMU. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 57(7),
1425–1438 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-014-5558-5
8. Sun, Y., Gong, D., Zhou, J., Sun, W., Xia, Z.: Low frequency vibration control of railway
vehicles based on a high static low dynamic stiffness dynamic vibration absorber. Sci. China
Technol. Sci. 62(1), 60–69 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-017-9300-5
9. Zhou, J.S.: Vibration and Control in Railway Vehicles. China Railway Publishing House,
Beijing (2012)
Active Modal Control of an Innovative Two-Axle
Vehicle with Composite Frame Running Gear
1 Introduction
Within the Shift2Rail projects Pivot2 and NEXTGEAR, an innovative Metro vehicle
with single axle running gear and only one suspension step is proposed to reduce the
tare weight per meter. A composite material running gear frame is developed to be used
both as structural and as suspension element. The frame is made to incorporate the
anti-roll bar. The design with only one suspension step can significantly degrade the
passengers ride comfort. Thus, active control is implemented both in lateral and vertical
direction to increase the performance of the system, i.e. improving the ride comfort,
while maintaining the benefits of a reduced vehicle weight.
As described in [1], different approaches can be used to actively control vibration
performance in railway applications. One major distinction can be made between active
and semi-active approaches, where, in both cases, the objective is the control of the
carbody motion. Among active approaches, Yusof et al. in [2] and Qazizadeh et al. in
[3] proved the effectiveness of modal active control in vertical direction and Orvnäs
et al. in [4] in lateral direction with simulations and field tests. As shown by different
authors and summarized in [1], active suspensions require more power in comparison
to semi-active ones but the improvement brought by the active approach is higher in
terms of comfort performance. Due to the poor ride comfort of the proposed vehicle,
where standard dampers are implemented, (with a comfort index around 5 according to
EN12299 [5] at 100 km/h), a fully active approach is chosen.
The key elements of the innovative vehicle, connection frame, carbody and actuators
are modelled to represent as closely as possible a real case application. To do so, both the
connection frame and the carbody are modelled in Abaqus and exported to SIMPACK.
Regarding the carbody, rigid models cannot be considered sufficient when dealing with
comfort evaluation. At the same time, as stated by Tomioka et al. in [6], a simple beam
model is not enough to represents the flexural modes of the carbody. Thus, the non-
existing carbody is created as FE model by trying to match expected eigenfrequencies
[8, 9]. The hydraulic actuator is instead created in the Simscape environment where the
non-linearities of hydraulic fluids are easily considered.
The innovative vehicle proposed here, and first introduced in the Shift2Rail project
Run2Rail [7], has the objective of reducing tare weight per meter of standard bogie
vehicles. The proposed solution is meant to substitute the S8000 vehicle in Metro Madrid
line 10. To do so, a vehicle with only one suspension step is considered. A further
improvement in the weight is given by the adoption of a composite material frame as
connection between carbody and wheelsets promising a total reduction in tare weight
per meter of about 400 kg. The frame has additionally to function as anti-roll bar. In
Fig. 1 this flexibility is shown through the first roll eigenmode (Table 2).
The U-shaped connection frame was developed to connect the carbody and the wheelsets.
In Fig. 2, the frame design is shown together with the connection points to the carbody and
the wheelset. The connection points are named after the corresponding elements, AB –
Axleboxes (housings for the wheel axle bearings), CS – Coil springs and RB – Rubber
bushes.
The frame is made of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), a high-performance
composite material. The utilization of this material significantly improves the frame’s
structural efficiency thanks to its excellent mechanical performance-to-weight ratio and
high fatigue strength.
The frame was developed to work both as structural and as suspension element, with
incorporated anti-roll functionality. To meet strict design requirements on the frame
strength and stiffness properties, a series of FE analyses was performed using the com-
mercially available software Abaqus. The FE analyses of the frame were coupled with
10 R. L. Giossi et al.
Fig. 1. Vehicle first roll eigenmode: a) vehicle motion in SIMPACK, b) leading connection frame
motion (absolute displacement contouring) and c) trailing connection frame motion (vertical
displacement contouring)
multi-body dynamic simulations of the entire vehicle using SIMPACK. After several
design/analysis iterations, the frame topology was optimized to achieve target values
of the stiffness and high strength to weight ratio. In Fig. 3, a distribution of the failure
index according to the Tsai-Hill criterion is shown in the frame subjected to exceptional
loads both in vertical and lateral direction. The maximum failure index in the frame
was analyzed as 0.69, which is below 1.0 and means that the design meets the strength
requirements.
Fig. 3. Distribution of the failure index according to Tsai-Hill criterion under exceptional loads,
with the maximum value of 0.69
2.2 Carbody
Due to the absence of an existing carbody, properties as realistic as possible were assumed
to increase the fidelity with a real case scenario in terms of comfort evaluation. The
carbody is designed to match expected eigenfrequencies [8, 9] as well as geometric and
physical properties. To do so, the carbody is designed to have a cross section of 3x3 m
and a length of 12 m. Three doors and four windows for each side, and a ventilation
hole on the roof are considered. Equipment masses are artificially added to lower the
carbody center of gravity. In the same manner, carbody-frame connection units are added
to provide connection points in SIMPACK (Fig. 4). Mass, center of gravity position in
vertical direction above the rail and the first five eigenfrequencies imported in SIMPACK
are shown in Table 1.
Mass [kg] C.o.g. [m] Vertical Torsion [Hz] Rhombic Second Lateral
bending [Hz] bending bending
[Hz] [Hz] [Hz]
12964 1.7 11.03 12.34 13.17 17.61 21.00
2.3 Actuator
A total of six actuators are implemented in the vehicle, four in vertical direction and two
in lateral direction. The vertical actuators are placed inside the coil springs located at
the end of the U-shaped connection frame, while the lateral actuators directly connect
the carbody to the cross-beam element of the frame. A representation of the actuators
location is given in Fig. 5 (Right). With this configuration, the six actuators will be able
to effectively control the rigid body modes of the carbody.
12 R. L. Giossi et al.
In order to represent a realistic case scenario, the hydraulic actuators used to control
the vehicle are modelled in the Simscape environment. Each actuator is composed by a
double acting hydraulic cylinder in which each chamber is separately controlled by an
independent circuit communicating with a common reservoir. Each circuit is composed
by a pump, a check valve and a pressure-controlled valve (see Fig. 5 (Left)). The latter
can vary the pressure in the circuit proportionally to a command current giving the
possibility of freely controlling the pressure inside each chamber.
In the co-simulation, the Simscape module solves the non-linear equations related to
the actuator dynamics and provides the actuators input forces to SIMPACK. Neverthe-
less, to properly calculate the response of the actuator to the vehicle stimuli, two service
signals (carbody and connection frame velocity) are needed from SIMPACK creating
a natural feedback loop in the co-simulation environment between Simulink and the
M.B.S. program.
where, [ϕ] is the mode shape matrix, [K] is the diagonal gain matrix, and z̈ is
the carbody accelerations vector (both vertical and lateral). Moreover, · represents the
combination of the integration function (1/s) and a high-pass filter with cut-off frequency
of 1 rad/s to disregard quasistatic behaviors. In Fig. 6 the control scheme is shown, where
only one acceleration measurement and one actuator are shown. Here the service signals
needed to simulate the actuator behavior are shown too.
Mode Roll Yaw Roll Pitch Bounce Ver. B Tors. Rhom. Sec. Lat.
name 1 2 B. B.
Frequency 0.94 1.83 2.01 2.54 2.68 11.03 12.34 13.17 17.61 21.00
[Hz]
Damping 0.03 0.96 0.05 0.02 0.02 1.82 1.00 1.12 4.31 1,17
ratio
Front left 0.9 0 0.3 1 1 0.9 1 0 −0.1 0.5
Front right −0.9 0 −0.3 1 1 0.7 −0.9 0 0 −0.2
Rear left 0.9 0 0.3 −1 1 0.9 −0.9 0 0.1 1
Rear right −0.9 0 −0.3 −1 1 1 0.9 0 0 −0.2
Lateral −1 1 −1 0 0 0 0.6 −1 0 −0.3
front
Lateral −1 −1 −1 0 0 0 – 0.6 −1 0 −0.3
rear
Once the control scheme has been implemented, for each considered speed, the gains
of the control matrix [K] are optimized with a GA procedure using the fit function based
on Eq. 1. Thus, a speed varying gain matrix of 5 gains by 12 velocities is identified. In
practice, a look-up table can be used to interpolate the required gains for any vehicle
speed.
4 Results
The optimization procedure described in Sect. 3.1 is applied to the innovative vehicle
described in Sect. 2. In Fig. 7, the effectiveness of the controller in reducing carbody
Active Modal Control of an Innovative Two-Axle Vehicle 15
acceleration is shown in terms of power spectral density. The results show the front and
center part of the carbody vertical acceleration for the human sensible frequency range
up to 30 Hz. The selected vehicle speed is 80 km/h being the most travelled speed on
Metro Madrid line 10.
The detailed comfort evaluation is shown in Fig. 8. Here, it is possible to see that the
actively controlled vehicle is below the acceptance level for comfortable ride expressed
in the EN12299 standard in terms of comfort index for all the studied velocities. Nev-
ertheless, a difference appears when vertical and lateral ride comfort are analyzed
separately.
Front Centre
0 0
Passive
-20 Active -20
-40 -40
Acc. Amplitude [dB]
-80 -80
-100 -100
-120 -120
0 10 20 30 0 10 20 30
Frequency [Hz] Frequency [Hz]
Fig. 7. Power spectral density of the carbody vertical acceleration in the front and center part
with the vehicle running at 80 km/h.
The continuous comfort value in lateral direction (Fig. 8 (bottom- right)) shows low
acceleration levels without any significant increase with speed while the value in vertical
direction (Fig. 8 (bottom- left)) increases with the vehicle speed. This is particularly
evident in the carbody center where the first bending mode plays a key role. The three
lowest flexible modes are in the sensible frequency range for comfort in vertical direction,
but they cannot be directly controlled by the defined active system. The difference
between the vertical and lateral behavior may lead to a perceived poorer comfort in
vertical direction due to the absence of an equal lateral counterpart.
Despite the above-mentioned problem, the modal active controller is capable of
significantly improving the starting condition where passive dampers are implemented.
In Table 3, the mean value of the comfort index between the passive and active vehicles
for each speed group is compared. The comparison shows what improvement an active
suspension can bring.
5 Conclusions
An innovative two-axle vehicle with only one suspension step has been proposed to
substantially reduce the tare weight per meter with respect to standard vehicles. To further
improve the weight reduction and incorporate the anti-roll bar, otherwise a separate
16 R. L. Giossi et al.
Fig. 8. Optimization results: comfort index (top), continuous vertical comfort (bottom-left) and
continuous lateral comfort (bottom-right)
Table 3. Summary of comfort index (NMV ) per speed range: active vs passive system
Acknowledgments. This project has received funding from the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking
under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement
(No. 777564). The content of this paper reflects only the author’s view, and the JU is not responsible
for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
References
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railway vehicles: a literature survey. Rail. Eng. Sci. 28(1), 3–35 (2020). https://doi.org/10.
1007/s40534-020-00207-w
2. Yusof, H.M., Goodall, R., Dixon, R.: Controller strategies for active secondary suspension
actuators. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Dynamics of Vehicle on
Roads and Tracks (IAVSD 2011) (2011)
3. Qazizadeh, A., Persson, R., Stichel, S.: On-track tests of active vertical suspension on a
passenger train. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 53(6), 798–811 (2015)
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improve ride comfort: Simulations on a full-scale model. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 49(9), 1409–1422
(2011)
5. CEN. EN 12299, Railway Applications - Ride Comfort for Passengers - Measurement and
Evaluation (2009)
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vibration of railway vehicle car body. Veh. Syst. Dyn. 44(SUPPL. 1), 272–285 (2006)
7. Persson, R., et al.: Innovative running gear solutions for new dependable, sustainable, intelli-
gent and comfortable rail vehicles, deliverable 3.2 – new actuation systems for conventional
vehicles and an innovative concept for a two-axle vehicle (2019)
8. Miao, B., Zhang, W., Zhang, J., Jin, D.: Evaluation of railway vehicle car body fatigue life
and durability using a multi-disciplinary analysis method. Int. J. Veh. Struct. Syst. 1(4), 85
(2009)
9. Wang, Q., Zeng, J., Wei, L., Zhu, B.: Carbody vibrations of high-speed train caused by dynamic
unbalance of underframe suspended equipment. Adv. Mech. Eng. 10(12), 1–13 (2018)
10. Bergander, B., Kunnes, W.: ERRI B176/DT 290: B176/3 Benchmark Problem, Results and
Assessment. Tech. report, Eur. Rail Res. Inst. (1993)
11. Sugahara, Y., Kojima, T.: Suppression of vertical vibration in railway vehicle carbodies
through control of damping force in primary suspension: presentation of results from running
tests with meter-gauge car on a secondary line. WIT Trans. Built Environ. 181, 329–337
(2018)
12. Orvnäs, A.: Methods for reducing vertical carbody vibrations of a rail vehicle: a literature
survey (2010)
A Research Facility for the Next
Generation Train Running Gear in True
Scale
Figure 1 showcases the conceptual design of the NGT running gear. The
axle bridge carries the wheels and the electric drives and is capable of rotating
around a virtual pivot constituted by the arrangement of two guiding rods. These
guiding rods and the primary suspensions connect the axle bridge to the frame
which in turn is linked to the carbody or integration test rig, respectively, by
secondary suspensions and push and pull rods.
The design of the axle bridge is tailored to have low floors even in double-deck
trains. The guidance function is accomplished by applying differential torques
to the wheel drives that initiate a yaw motion of the axle bridge. This way, the
running gear is capable of steering into curves and counteract disturbances, e.g.
20 A. Heckmann et al.
introduced by rail irregularities. Wear and noise reduction are additional benefits
that are targeted.
The electrical engines are permanent magnet synchronous motors that
directly drive the wheels without gears. They provide 180 kW and 2050 Nm,
each. They are spring-mounted to the axle bridge in order to reduce the unsprung
mass, improve the track-friendliness and protect the engines from highly dynamic
track excitations.
The overall weight of the complete running gear amounts to 3000 kg, which is
the result of an elaborate optimization in order to reduce the weight and reserve
as much payload capacity as possible [5].
Fig. 2. Rendering of the NGT running gear assembled at its integration test rig.
[6] or even complete vehicle roller rigs, see e.g. [7] and [8, Ch. 19], this offers the
opportunity to transport the complete facility and exhibit it at pertinent fairs.
With this background, the diameter of the rollers have been specified to only
600 mm. The assumption that the associated stronger coupling of the yaw and
vertical motion of the running gear requires additional control considerations
compared to the flat track situation turned out to be irrelevant so far, but
will be kept under investigation. Two alternative rail gauges can be manually
adjusted, namely 1435 and 1465 mm.
The integration test rig is dedicated to the assembly and initial implemen-
tation of the running gear. It is the main objective to ensure that all sensors
provide signals and all actuators deliver torques as they are supposed to, before
costly measurement sessions at external roller rigs are allocated. This is why
the maximum running speed is limited to 5 m/s. Advanced configurations such
as independently rotating right and left rollers in order to emulate the running
along curves, the introduction of lateral roller excitations or sophisticated vibra-
tion isolation measures are also not considered.
A magnet particle roller service brake that provides up to 820 Nm and an
additional fail safe brake are attached to the roller axle. The replacement of the
service brake by a motor drive has been taken into account for later upgrades.
Initially, coil springs are installed as secondary suspensions and are capable
of applying vertical loads up to 135 kN. In the course of the project, it is intended
to replace these coil springs by active components.
The automation and real-time environment of the research facility is equipped
to cope with about 200 measurement channels that are provided for operational
and reference purposes.
4 Control Structure
The research facility is dedicated to the active lateral guidance of the NGT
running gear, which relies on two subtasks:
– The lateral position of the running gear with respect to the track center line
is an important measurement in order to organize lateral guidance, but is dif-
ficult to measure in daily operation on a real track. This is why observation of
this quantity has been proposed in [9] and will be prototyped in true scale at
the research facility. Three alternative sensor configurations and three differ-
ent nonlinear filter algorithms, the Extended Kalman Filter, the Unscented
Kalman Filter and the Ensemble Kalman Filter have been analyzed with
promising results in previous research efforts, cp. [10].
– The guidance function for the NGT running gear utilizes differential torques
applied by the wheel drives. The set-up and validation of the control of these
torques is a major challenge. Two alternative control approaches, namely
state feedback and nonlinear dynamic inversion control, are to be compared
with respect to performance and robustness in future research activities, cp.
[4,11].
22 A. Heckmann et al.
Since the system characteristic strongly depend on the running velocity vR , these
coefficients are scheduled with respect to vR , e.g. ky = ky (vR ).
The prefilter in Fig. 3 incorporates the set-point or demand value y ∗ to effect
the equilibrium and steady state solution of the closed loop, see [12, Sec. 6.2].
The scenarios that are currently used for virtual tests in multi-body simulation
consider
Scenario 1: straight running of the running gear along the track center line,
Scenario 2: straight running, but with lateral offset to the track center line,
Scenario 3: artificial hunting motion with various speeds and frequencies and
Scenario 4: stochastic transient trajectories to emulate rail irregularities.
In the simulations presented below, observer, control and a detailed multi-
body model of the running gear including the integration test rig are simulated
in closed loop. They are organized as a co-simulation of the multi-body code Sim-
pack and MatlabTM , where the observation and control algorithms are prepared
to be used in the real-time environment later on.
The upper plot of Fig. 4 shows the running gear running centered at 5 m/s
speed, before the lateral offset of 3 mm is commanded to be reached within 0.3 s.
The second plot below presents the estimation error |y − ŷ| and the control error
|y − y ∗ |.
Figure 5 presents results of a simulation of Scenario 4. It is associated to
the excitations that are introduced by rail irregularities on a real track. How-
ever, the rollers of the integration test rig are not capable of reproducing these
excitations. In order to nevertheless analyze the control performance for given
disturbances, Scenario 4 is defined in the following way: stochastic irregularities
are not represented by the associated motion of the rollers, but introduced by
transient set-point variations of the lateral control, instead. Again, the running
24 A. Heckmann et al.
gear runs at 5 m/s in the simulation to which Fig. 5 refers to. The control error
here reaches values up to 0.3 mm.
These scenarios illustrate an important aspect: the guidance system allows
the lateral position to be freely determined within the track channel. In this way,
wear can not only be reduced, but the control is also capable of ruling, at which
point of the profile the wheel touches the rail and where wear takes place. This
offers the opportunity to control the profile accuracy of the wheel as well and to
reduce the costs associated to reprofiling efforts.
The promising results of previous research on the NGT running gears motivated
the decision of the DLR to build a true scale prototype and use it as research
facility on mechatronic guidance. With this background, the paper introduces the
design features of the NGT running gear and discusses its initial implementation
and commissioning using an in-house integration test rig.
After successful operations in low speed scenarios in 2022, advanced perfor-
mance tests with speeds up to 350 km/h on external test rigs are scheduled to
take place in 2023 and 2024. Plans to mount the running gear to a railway vehicle
and extend these experiments on real test tracks as well already exist.
NGT Running Gear Research Facility 25
The prototype is supplied with many sensors for operational use and reference
purposes. In addition, elaborate physical models of the running gear persist, since
they have been used for the design lay-out in simulation and will be employed
for observation and control in operation. Hence, it is an obvious step to combine
physical models and measurement data and to develop a digital twin. Therefore,
the NGT running gear is an ideal equipment for further research on how to
monitor vehicles and infrastructure.
Advanced control approaches beyond guidance e.g. associated to adhesion
management and wheel slip protection are as well promising research fields to
be tackled by the research facility in the future.
Appendix
The tables below list the parameter values that are applied to generate the
simulation results presented in Sect. 5. The reference coordinate system is located
at the top of the rollers, centralized in lateral, i.e. in y-direction and z-axis
pointing downwards. The positions are specified in reference position with a
vertical preload of 126 kN, applied by prestressing the secondary suspensions
(Tables 1, 2, 3 and 4).
Table 1. Values of the state feedback control for vR = 5 m/s, see (1).
ky kẏ kψ kψ̇
5 4 4
9.5 · 10 2.3541 · 10 3.7225 · 10 8.3412 · 102
The most interesting visitor of them all was the American writer and
protégé of Gertrude Stein, Charles Henri Ford, who published a
queer book of adolescence in Paris under the rather puritan title of
The Young and Evil. Young Mr. Ford suddenly dropped in upon me
one day when a group of tribesmen were killing a steer in my
garden. They cooked the liver in the yard and roasted some of the
meat on skewers and invited him to join us in the feast. He was like a
rare lily squatting in among the bearded and bournoused natives,
and he enjoyed it. When he left in the evening I gave him a chunk of
meat from what had been given to me.
He had been in Italy with a Cuban girl. When they came to Madrid
she found a young Spanish lover and the three of them came on to
Tangier. He came to see me soon again and I invited some of the
younger Moors and a few fatmahs to meet him. They all rather liked
him. They said he looked wonderfully like the cinema portraits of
Marlene Dietrich.
He came again and again, evidently liking my little isolated house on
the river. He was likable enough, and we gave a few native parties
for him. The young men brought their lutes and mandolins and sang
Andalusian melodies, and the girls danced. One evening Mr. Ford
came over early and excitedly told me that the young men were
bringing a very beautiful fatmah—prettier than any he had seen at
my place. I said I couldn't think of any pretty girl of that class whom
Mr. Ford knew and I had not seen before. He said he felt certain I
hadn't seen her. So we waited expectantly until the carriages arrived
with the party. When the girl unveiled she turned out to be the first
little one who had worked for me when I arrived in Tangier. We were
both very surprised. She had lost the quaint native freshness of our
earlier acquaintanceship and already she had developed like a fine
and hardened cashew-nut. She was not aware that the joy-makers
were bringing her to my new place. But she was not in the slightest
embarrassed. She established herself as temporary hostess as well
as guest and was just as charming in the rôle as she had been
efficient as a little housekeeper.... Our fiesta lasted two days. The
Moroccans are a magical barbaric people, if one isn't too civilized to
appreciate the subtlety and beauty of their barbaresques. When at
last I decided to return to America, in homage to them I indited: "A
Farewell to Morocco."
Oh wistful and heartrending earth, oh land
Of colors singing symphonies of life!
Myself is like a stone upon my spirit,
Reluctant, passing from your sunny shore.
Oh native colors,
Pure colors aglow
With magic light.
XXIX
On Belonging to a Minority Group
IT was in Africa that I was introduced to Nancy Cunard—an
introduction by mail. Years before, when I saw her at a studio in
Paris, she had been mentioned as a personage, but I had not been
introduced. In Africa I received a pamphlet from Miss Cunard entitled
Black Man and White Ladyship. The interesting pamphlet gave
details about the Cunard daughter establishing a friendship with a
Negro musician, of which the Cunard mother had disapproved.
Miss Cunard wrote that she was making a Negro anthology to
dedicate to her Negro friend, and asked me to be a contributor. I
promised that I would as soon as I found it possible to take time from
the novel I was writing. That started an interesting correspondence
between us.
Although I considered the contents of the Nancy Cunard pamphlet of
absorbing interest and worthy of publication, I did not admire the
style and tone of presentation.
After some months, Miss Cunard informed me that she was traveling
to New York, and from there to the West Indies, including Jamaica.
She asked me if I could introduce her to anybody in Jamaica who
could put her in touch with the natives. I addressed her to my eldest
brother, who is well-placed somewhere between the working masses
and the controlling classes of Jamaica and has an excellent
knowledge of both. From Jamaica Miss Cunard wrote again that she
had landed in paradise after the purgatory of New York, where she
was put in the spotlight by the newspapers, when it was discovered
that she was residing in Harlem among the Negroes. My brother
invited her to his home in the heart of the banana, chocolate, and
ginger region of Jamaica, and she stayed there two weeks with her
Negro secretary. Both she and her secretary wrote extolling my
brother's hospitality and the warmth and kindliness of the peasants.
Miss Cunard said she particularly liked my brother's face, and she
sent me a snapshot of him.
Meanwhile I had come to the point of a breakdown while working on
my novel in Morocco; and besides I was in pecuniary difficulties.
Nevertheless I wrote an article for Miss Cunard's anthology and
forwarded it to her on her return to France. Miss Cunard
extravagantly praised the article and said it was one of the best and
also that I was one of the best, whatever that "best" meant. She said
she would use it with a full-page photograph of myself which was
done by a friend of ours, the photographer, Berenice Abbot.
However, she did not accompany her praise by a check, and I
requested payment. I was in need of money. Miss Cunard replied
that she was not paying contributors and that my article was too long
after all. She was doing the book for the benefit of the Negro race
and she had thought that every Negro would be glad to contribute
something for nothing. She had suffered and sacrificed a fortune for
Negroes, she said.
I comprehended Miss Cunard's way of reasoning. Yet in spite of the
penalty she had to pay for her interest in the Negro, I did not
consider it my bounden duty to write for her without remuneration.
Miss Cunard would have been shocked at the idea of asking the
printers and binders to print and bind her charitable book without
remuneration. But in spite of her ultra-modern attitude toward life,
apparently she still clung to the antiquated and aristocratic and very
British idea that artists should perform for noble and rich people for
prestige instead of remuneration.
I might say that I too have suffered a lot for my knowledge of, and
contact with, the white race. Yet if I were composing an anthology of
the white hell, it never would have occurred to me that all
sympathetic white writers and artists owed me a free contribution. I
suppose it takes a modern white aristocrat to indulge in that kind of
archaic traditional thinking.
As Miss Cunard would not pay for my article, I requested its return.
She said she was going to take extracts from it. I forbade her to
touch it. That made her mad, comme une vache enragée. My brother
also was supposed to do an article on the Jamaica banana industry
for Miss Cunard. He decided not to. And suddenly Miss Cunard did
not like his face any more. She wrote that he was big and fat.
In her pamphlet Black Man and White Ladyship the reader gets the
impression that the Cunard daughter enjoys taking a Negro stick to
beat the Cunard mother. Miss Cunard seemed to have been ultra-
modern in ideas and contacts without alarming Lady Cunard, who
was a little modern herself. Then Miss Cunard became aware of the
Negro by way of jazz in Venice. And soon also she was made aware
that her mother would not accept her friendship with a Negro. Other
white women have come up against that problem. It is not merely a
problem of people of different races; people of different religions and
of different classes know the unreasonableness and the bitterness of
it. The mother Cunard drastically reduced the income of the daughter
Cunard. The daughter replied with the pamphlet Black Man and
White Ladyship, which was not published for sale but probably for
spite. In telling the story of her friendship, Miss Cunard among other
things ridicules her mother's American accent. Yet the American
Negroes she professes to like speak the same language as her
mother, with slight variations.
Writing in her strange, heavy and ineffectual giant of a Negro
anthology, Miss Cunard has this to say of me: "His people [the
characters of my novels] and himself have also that wrong kind of
race-consciousness; they ring themselves in."
The statement is interesting, not so much from the narrow personal
as from the broader social angle of a minority group of people and its
relationship to friends who belong to the majority group. It leaves me
wondering whether it would be altogether such a bad thing if by
ringing itself in closer together, a weak, disunited and suppressed
group of people could thereby develop group pride and strength and
self-respect!
It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority and outcast group. For to
most members of the powerful majority, you are not a person; you
are a problem. And every crusading crank imagines he knows how
to solve your problem. I think I am a rebel mainly from psychological
reasons, which have always been more important to me than
economic. As a member of a weak minority, you are not supposed to
criticize your friends of the strong majority. You will be damned mean
and ungrateful. Therefore you and your group must be content with
lower critical standards.
A Fannie Hurst who is a best seller is interested in Negro literature.
She is nice to Negro writers and artists. She visits among Negroes.
She engages a Negro secretary. And finally she writes a trashy novel
of Negro life. Negro critics do not like the novel. Fannie Hurst thinks
they are ungrateful. I suppose the only way Negro critics could get
around the dilemma would be to judge Fannie Hurst by social and
sentimental instead of artistic standards. But that wouldn't help the
Negro literature that Fannie Hurst desires to promote. I think Negro
writers might benefit more by the forthright criticism of such southern
gentlemen as H.L. Mencken and Joseph Wood Krutch than by the
kindness of a Fannie Hurst.
A southern white woman who is married to a black journalist says, in
a critique entitled, Don'ts for My Daughter, that she would not "want
her to read Home to Harlem, which overemphasizes the carnal side
of the Aframerican." I will confess that I may fall short of that degree
of civilization which perfects the lily-white state of mind of the gentle
southern lady. And that was why as a creative writer I was unable to
make nice distinctions between the carnal and the pure and
happened perhaps to sin on the side of the carnal in Home to
Harlem.
Yet I once read in a Negro magazine some stanzas entitled,
Temptation, by a certain Young Southern White Lady, and attributed
to my pure critic, which sound like a wild jazz page out of Nigger
Heaven. I remember some of those stanzas:
I couldn't forget
The banjo's whang
And the piano's bang
As we strutted the do-do-do's
In Harlem!
I couldn't forget
That black boy's eyes
That black boy's shake
That black boy's size
I couldn't forget
O, snow white me!
Now to the mind of this black sinner this piece of sophisticated lily-
white lyricism is more offensively carnal than the simple primitive
erotic emotions of the characters of Home to Harlem. But I reiterate it
is possible that I am not civilized white enough to appreciate the
purity of the mind which composed the above stanzas and to which
Home to Harlem is carnal.
The white lady is raising her mulatto daughter on a special diet and
periodically the child is featured as a prodigy in the New York Herald
Tribune. But it is possible that when that child has grown up out of
the state of being a prodigy she might prefer a plain fare, including
Home to Harlem. I have not had the time to be an experimentalist
about life, because I have been occupied always with facing hard
facts. And this I know to be a fact: Right here in New York there are
children of mixed parentage, who have actually hated their white
mother after they had grown up to understanding. When they came
up against the full force of the great white city on the outside and
went home to face a helpless white mother (a symbol of that white
prejudice) it was more than their Negroid souls could stand.
I think it would be illuminating to know the real feelings of that white
mother, who was doubtlessly devoted to her colored children.... I
myself have had the experience of a fine friendship with a highly
cultured white woman, when I first arrived in the United States—a
friendship which was turned into a hideous nightmare because of the
taboos of the dominant white community. I still retain a bitter memory
of my black agony, but I can only try to imagine the white crucifixion
of that cultured woman....
I do not think the author of Don'ts for My Daughter, felt personally
antagonistic to me, when she wrote in the leading Negro magazine
that she did not want her child to read my novel. It is possible that
like myself she has faith in literary and artistic truth. Perhaps she
even desires to contribute something to the growing literature of
Negro life. I have read an interesting article by her on "America's
Changing Color Line," which emphasizes the idea that America is
steadily growing darker in complexion, and is informing about the
increasing numbers of white Negroids who are absorbed by the
white group.
Without the slightest feeling of antagonism to my critic, I would
suggest to her that vicarious stories of "passing white" are merely of
slight importance to the great group of fifteen millions who are
obviously Negroes. I would suggest to her that if she really desires to
make a unique contribution to American literature, she has a chance
of doing something that no Negro can—something that might be
worthwhile for her daughter to read: she might write a sincere
account of what it means for an educated and sensitive white woman
to be the wife of a Negro in America.
Gertrude Stein, the high priestess of artless-artful Art, identifies
Negro with Nothingness. When the eternal faddists who exist like
vampires on new phenomena become fed up with Negro art, they
must find a reason for their indifference. From being disappointed in
Paul Robeson, Gertrude Stein concludes that Negroes are suffering
from nothingness. In the ineffable Stein manner she decided to take
Paul Robeson as the representative of Negro culture. Similarly, any
other faddist could arbitrarily make Chaliapin or Al Jolson or Maurice
Chevalier or Greta Garbo the representative of Russian, Jewish,
French and Swedish culture respectively. When Gertrude Stein finds
that Paul Robeson knows American values and American life as only
one in it and not of it could, when she discovers that he is big and
naïve, but not quite naïve enough to please Gertrude Stein, she
declares: "The African is not primitive; he has a very ancient but a
very narrow culture and there it remains. Consequently nothing can
happen." Not long after she published this, something was
happening: Negro Americans were rendering her opera Four Saints
in Three Acts to sophisticated New York audiences.
Well, whatever the white folks do and say, the Negro race will finally
have to face the need to save itself. The whites have done the
blacks some great wrongs, but also they have done some good.
They have brought to them the benefits of modern civilization. They
can still do a lot more, but one thing they cannot do: they cannot give
Negroes the gift of a soul—a group soul.
Wherever I traveled in Europe and Africa I was impressed by the
phenomenon of the emphasis on group life, whether the idea behind
it was Communist co-operative or Fascist collective or regional
autonomy. I lived under a Communist dictatorship in Russia, two
Fascist dictatorships in Europe, and the French colonial dictatorship
in Morocco. I don't like any dictatorship.
It would be altogether too ludicrous to point out that white women are
by far more an indivisible part of this country's population than
Negroes! Yet the advance guard of white women realize that they
have a common and special group interest, different from the
general interests of their fathers and brothers and their husbands
and sons.
It goes without saying that the future of the Negro is bound up with
the future system of world economy. And all progressive social
trends indicate that that system will be based on the principle of
labor for communal instead of private profit. I have no idea how the
new system will finally work out. I have never believed in the
infallibility of the social prophets, even though some of their
predictions and calculations have come true. It is possible that in
some countries some of the captains of capitalist industry might
become labor leaders and prove themselves more efficient than
many reactionary labor leaders. Who knows?
Anyway, it seems to me that if Negroes were organized as a group
and as workers, whatever work they are doing (with or without the
whites), and were thus getting a practical education in the nature and
the meaning of the labor movement, it might even be more important
and worthwhile than for them to become members of radical political
parties.
A West Indian charlatan came to this country, full of antiquated social
ideas; yet within a decade he aroused the social consciousness of
the Negro masses more than any leader ever did. When Negroes
really desire a new group orientation they will create it.
Such is my opinion for all that it may be worth. I suppose I have a
poet's right to imagine a great modern Negro leader. At least I would
like to celebrate him in a monument of verse. For I have nothing to
give but my singing. All my life I have been a troubadour wanderer,
nourishing myself mainly on the poetry of existence. And all I offer
here is the distilled poetry of my experience.
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.