T. X.

Mei Practical Strategies for

School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
Phone: 44 (0)113 343 2066;
Fax: 44 (0)113 343 2032
e-mail: t.x.mei@ee.leeds.ac.uk
R. M. Goodall
Department of Electronic and Electrical
Engineering,
Loughborough University, Loughborough,
LEICS. LE11 3TU, UK
Phone: 44 (0)1509 227009;
Fax: 44 (0)1509 227008
e-mail: R.M.Goodall@lboro.ac.uk
Controlling Railway Wheelsets
Independently Rotating Wheels
This paper presents the development of an active control strategy for railway vehicles
with independently rotating wheels. The proposed control scheme is intuitively formulated
with a simple control structure and adaptive to vehicle speed. It does not require basic
guidance measurements (e.g., wheel-rail deflection and angle of attack) that are expensive
and impractical to implement. Speed sensors are used to measure the relative rotational
speed of the two wheels on a same axle and sensors are also used to measure the relative
yaw velocity of the wheelset and the body it is connected. Both curving performance and
passenger ride comfort of the actively controlled vehicle are compared with that of a
typical passive vehicle and an optimal control scheme. 关DOI: 10.1115/1.1592191兴

1 Introduction
A conventional railway wheelset is comprised of two coned/
profiled wheels rigidly connected to a common axle, hence the
term solid axle wheelset. The solid axle wheelset has been suc-
cessfully used for many years, principally because it has the abil-
ity of natural 共self兲 curving and centring. When travelling on a
curve, the wheelset moves outwards in the lateral direction so that
the outer wheel rotates at a larger radius at the contact point with
the rail than the inner wheel to accommodate the different travel
distance of the two wheels, resulting in a pure rolling action of
both wheels. However an unconstrained solid axle wheelset is
unstable at nonzero speeds and exhibits a sustained oscillation in
the lateral plane which is only constrained by the wheel flanges, a
phenomenon known as ‘‘wheelset hunting.’’ This is overcome on
conventional railway vehicles using springs connected from the
wheelset to the bogie or the body of the vehicle. The stiffness of
the springs is selected such that the minimum speed where the
wheelset becomes unstable 共termed ‘‘critical speed’’兲 is above the
maximum vehicle design speed. However, this added stiffness de-
grades the ability of the wheelset to curve and it may cause severe
wear of the wheels and rails. This is because the two wheels of the
wheelset are forced away from the pure rolling lines and conse-
quently contact forces are developed at the wheel-rail interface
which are caused by so-called ‘‘creepages’’ between the wheel
and rail surfaces, small relative velocities which are a result of
elastic deformation of the steel at the point of contact and which
apply in both longitudinal and lateral directions. In some cases
such as low speed sharp curves, the hard contact between the rail
head and wheel flanges 共a part of wheel designed for safety, which
ideally should not be in contact with the rail兲 will occur, which not
only causes maximum wear and noise, but also increases the risk
of derailment in extreme conditions. It has always been a very
difficult design trade-off between the wheelset stability and the
curving performance.
While a compromise between different design objectives for a
railway vehicle has to be made if only passive solutions are em-
ployed, studies have shown that it is possible to solve this design
conflict by the use of active control concepts to steer the solid axle
wheelset 关1,2兴. It has been shown that active steering schemes can
provide necessary stabilization control without affecting the natu-
ral curving action of the wheelset. Alternatively active controls
Contributed by the Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control Division of THE
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS for publication in the ASME
JOURNAL OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS, MEASUREMENT, AND CONTROL. Manuscript
received by the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division August 29, 2002;
final revision, March 26, 2003. Associate Editor: A. Alleyne.
can be developed to steer the wheelset to follow the pure rolling
line on curves 关3兴. However, the actuation requirement for con-
trolling the solid axle wheelset can be quite high in general 关1兴.
An alternative way forward is to move away from the conven-
tional solid axle approach and allow the two wheels on the same
axle to rotate independently from each other, hence the term in-
dependently rotating wheelset or ‘‘IRW’’ in short 关1,4,5兴. By re-
moving the constraint on the rotational motion of the two wheels,
the longitudinal creep force of wheels is significantly reduced 共al-
most eliminated兲 and therefore there is no longer the need for the
pure rolling action of the wheelset. Also the much reduced creep
force means that the actuation requirement 共the control effort兲 for
active control schemes will be much lower. However, there are
disadvantages of the new wheelset configuration. One of the main
drawbacks is that the independently rotating wheelset does not
have the natural curving ability of the conventional wheelset, and
hence some form of guidance control must be provided.
The self-curving and centring effect can be slightly restored by
gravitational force if a ‘‘worn’’ type of wheel profile with a spe-
cially designed tread is used 关6兴. This restoring effect is, however,
much less effective than the rolling radius effect of a conventional
wheelset and is not large enough to affect behavior on curves 关7兴.
In addition, instability is still observed with independently rotat-
ing wheelset and additional effect is required to avoid potential
oscillations in practice 关7, 8兴. Some improved performance can be
achieved by using the coupling between the two wheels 共but much
softer than the elastically constrained solid-axle wheelset兲, e.g., by
means of a magnet powder coupling 关9兴. An unsymmetric struc-
ture where a mixture of solid-axle and independently rotating
wheelsets has also been proposed to improve the dynamic stability
and the ability to steer around curves 关10兴.
In the design of an active steering scheme for the independently
rotating wheelset, it is obvious that the relative displacement be-
tween the wheelset and the track 共the wheel-rail deflection兲 is the
natural choice of feedback required to provide the necessary guid-
ance action for the wheelset to follow the track. Other measure-
ments may also be required for the stabilization and performance
optimization 共e.g., angle of attack兲. However, a direct measure-
ment of the wheel-rail deflection is not readily available at present
and will be very expensive to achieve in practice. Although state
estimation techniques such as Kalman filters can be used to esti-
mate the signals from other practical sensors, the control structure
can be much more complex with high orders and it can be very
difficult to make observers to work effectively in the presence of
large parameter variations 关11兴.
This paper presents the development of an intuitively formu-
lated controller for the active steering of independently rotating

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 wheelsets. The resulting controller is simple to implement and
adaptive to the vehicle speed. Feedback is the measurement of the
relative rotation speed of the two wheels on same axles, and the
relative yaw velocity between the wheelset and vehicle body. The
latter can be replaced with the use of passive dampers in the
longitudinal/yaw direction.
2 Vehicle Configuration
A two-axle vehicle derived from a study of ‘‘mechatronic trains
for the future’’ 关12兴 is used in the study and Fig. 1 gives a sim-
plified plan view diagram. The parameters for this vehicle scheme
are based upon the requirements for future high speed passenger
vehicles having a design speed of 300 km/h. The vehicle scheme
consists of a vehicle body and two wheelsets. The wheelsets are
connected to the body via springs and dampers in the lateral di-
rection. Note that no longitudinal springs or dampers are shown,
although in practice some form of longitudinal connection is
needed to transmit traction and braking forces from the wheels to
the vehicle body. However, it is common practice to omit these
when studying bogie dynamics, and in the particular case of an
active scheme it also avoids problems of introducing uncontrol-
lable degrees-of-freedom into the design model. There will also be
a vertical suspension, but this and the associated roll suspension
are not considered in the plan view design model because the
The behavior of a railway wheelset is dominated by the contact
mechanics at the wheel-rail interface. The creep laws are now well
understood and a linearized version has been used in many studies
关8,13兴. The longitudinal creep force affects the yaw motion of the
wheelset and in the case of independently rotating wheels the
relative rotation of the two wheels, and the lateral creep force
affects the lateral motion. Only those three motions are included
in this study, as other motions are not relevant to the study of
active steering. Similarly, only the lateral and yaw motions are
considered for the vehicle body. The vehicle model can be repre-
sented by Eqs. 共1兲–共8兲, which is a linearized model with eight
degrees of freedom. The use of linearized models is justified on
the basis that an active steering scheme will improve performance
on curves in a manner which considerably reduces the effects of
nonlinearities. The nonlinearities of a railway vehicle model are
largely associated with nonlinear wheel-rail profiles and contact
forces, which become particularly problematic when the wheel-
rail contact point approaches the wheel flanges. However, effec-
tive use of active steering control will overcome this problem by
steering the wheelset to operate at the linear region of the wheel
tread and rail surface,
m w ÿ w1 ⫹ 冉 2 f 22
Vs 冊
⫹C s ẏ w1 ⫹K s y w1 ⫺2 f 22␺ w1 ⫺C s ẏ v ⫺K s y v

study deals with the active steering of the wheelsets for which
only the plan view dynamics of the vehicle are of prime interest.
On each wheelset, an actuator is also placed between the
⫺C s L v ␺˙ v ⫺K s L v ␺ v ⫽m w 冉 V s2
R1
冊
⫺g ␪ c1 , (1)

wheelset and the vehicle body in the yaw direction for the imple- 2 f 11L 2g 2 f 11␭L g 2r 0 f 11L g
mentation of active control. The actuator placement is important I w ␺¨ w1 ⫹ ␺˙ w1 ⫹ y w1 ⫹ ␾˙ w1
for providing effective control of the wheelsets. A comparison of Vs r0 Vs
different configurations has shown that, whilst it is possible to 2 f 11L 2g 2 f 11␭L g
develop active steering schemes with actuators either in the yaw ⫽ ⫹ y t1 ⫹T w1 , (2)
or in the lateral directions, the latter arrangement worsens the ride R1 r0
quality 关1兴. This is because the wheelset-controlling force directly r 20 f 11 r 0 f 11L g
applied to the vehicle body in the lateral direction has an adverse ¨ ⫹
I w1 ␾ ␾˙ w1 ⫹ f 11␭•y w1 ⫹ ␺˙ w1
w1
effect on the body modes, whereas yaw actuators have a much Vs Vs
smaller effect. r 0 f 11L g
There is a variety of ways in which the torsional actuator can be ⫽ ⫹ f 11␭•y t1 , (3)
implemented in practice. One approach is to use a pair of longi- R1

冉 冊
tudinal actuators, controlled in such a way that action is only
2 f 22
applied in a differential sense. An alternative is to use a rotational m w ÿ w2 ⫹ ⫹C s ẏ w2 ⫹K s y w2 ⫺2 f 22␺ w2 ⫺C s ẏ v ⫺K s y v
actuator with a crank and linkage arrangement, but the intention in Vs

冉 冊
this paper is to describe a practical sensing and control strategy
V s2
that could be applied irrespective of the chosen actuator technol- ⫹C s L v ␺˙ v ⫹K s L v ␺ v ⫽m w ⫺g ␪ c2 , (4)
ogy, and so this level of detail has not been considered. For a R2
particular implementation it would be necessary to check and if
necessary refine the controller using a full complexity simulation 2 f 11L 2g 2 f 11␭L g 2r 0 f 11L g
I w ␺¨ w2 ⫹ ␺˙ w2 ⫹ y w2 ⫹ ␾˙ w2
model 共e.g., using an MBS package兲. Vs r0 Vs
2 f 11L 2g 2 f 11␭L g
⫽ ⫹ y t2 ⫹T w2 , (5)
R2 r0
r 20 f 11 r 0 f 11L g
¨ ⫹
I w1 ␾ ␾˙ w2 ⫹ f 11␭•y w2 ⫹ ␺˙ w2
w2
Vs Vs
r 0 f 11L g
⫽ ⫹ f 11␭•y t2 , (6)
R2

m v ÿ v ⫹2C s ẏ v ⫹2K s y v ⫺C s ẏ w1 ⫺K s y w1 ⫺C s ẏ w2 ⫺K s y w2

⫽
m v V s2
2 冉 1
⫹
1
R1 R2
⫺
m vg
2 冊
共 ␪ c1 ⫹ ␪ c2 兲 , (7)

Fig. 1 Simplified plan view of a two-axle vehicle
I v ␺¨ v ⫹2L 2v C s ␺˙ v ⫹2L 2v C s ␺ v ⫺L v C s ẏ w1 ⫹L v C s ẏ w2 ⫺L v K s y w1
⫹L v K s y w2 ⫽⫺ 共 T w1 ⫹T w2 兲 . (8)
Equations 共1兲–共3兲 represent the lateral motion, the yaw motion
and the relative rotation between the two wheels of the leading
wheelset respectively. Equations 共4兲–共6兲 represent those for the

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 trailing wheelset. Equations 共7兲 and 共8兲 are for the lateral and yaw
motions of the vehicle body. The longitudinal dynamics 共and the
absolute forward rotation of the wheels兲 are not modeled. Those
motions are not particularly relevant in the study of railway ve-
hicle dynamics because of the large time constant of the forward
motion. The vehicle speed is therefore assumed as constant, and
for the study of different speeds it is considered adequate to just
change the value of V s in the model. The reference directions 共in
the plan view diagram as shown in Fig. 1兲 are from left to right for
the lateral movements and clockwise for the yaw movements. The
positive reference for the relative rotation between the two wheels
of each wheelset is in the direction where it makes the wheelset to
yaw in the positive direction. There are two different types of
railway track input. The curve radius (R 1 , R 2 ) and cant angles
( ␪ c1 , ␪ c2 ) are the deterministic features corresponding to the in-
tended track alignment which are designed to satisfy passenger
comfort requirements, whereas the track random inputs (y t1 , y t2 )
are the unintended track feature which is the deviation from the
intended alignment.
3 Control Designs
A detailed analysis of the independently rotating wheelset re-
veals that the kinematic instability of the solid axle wheelset is not
removed by allowing the two wheels to rotate freely 关8兴. There-
fore some form of stabilization effort should be provided in addi-
tion to the guidance action necessary to control the wheelsets to
follow the track.
A number of factors affect the controller design. First, the sys-
tem model is highly interactive with high order 共14th order:- 5th
order for each wheelset and 4th order for the body兲. There are
Fig. 2 Lateral mode „mode A …
Fig. 3 Yaw mode „mode B …
356 Õ Vol. 125, SEPTEMBER 2003
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interactions between lateral, yaw, and rotation motions within
each wheelset. Also there are interactions between the two
wheelsets via the body motions. Second, the deterministic and
random track inputs affect the wheelset behavior differently and it
is important to accommodate the two track features effectively in
the control design. Third, the study is aimed at avoiding the use of
impractical/expensive measurement or the requirement of a com-
plex state estimator, and therefore minimizing the cost and com-
plexity of the active control scheme. Finally the controller should
be adaptive to the vehicle travelling speed, as the wheelset dy-
namics are speed dependent.
To reduce the order of the system model and complexity of the
control design, a modal control approach can be employed to
de-couple the model into two independent subsystems. This tech-
nique has been proved very effective for a vehicle with solid-axle
wheelsets 关14兴, but it can be readily adapted for vehicles with
IRW’s. By adding and subtracting corresponding motion equa-
tions for the two wheelsets, i.e., yaw, lateral, and rotational motion
equations of one wheelset are added to or subtracted from corre-
sponding ones of the other wheelset, it can be shown that one of
the resulting subsystems may be regarded as a IRW wheelset at-
tached to a mass of the body lateral motion as shown in Fig. 2
共termed lateral mode兲 and the other as a IRW attached to a mass of
the body yaw motion as given in Fig. 3 共termed yaw mode兲. The
output measurements from the two wheelsets are decomposed to
give feedback signals required by the lateral and yaw controllers,
respectively, and the output signals from the two controllers are
then recombined to control the two wheelsets accordingly. Vari-
ables used in the figures are defined as
Transactions of the ASME
 Table 1 Eigenvalues of lateral and yaw modes back 共for which passive yaw or longitudinal stiffness may be
„ Vs Ä83.3 mÕs… used兲. Stabilization with yaw velocity or lateral acceleration feed-
back can provide better damping, although there is a constraint on
Lateral mode Yaw mode
damping freq. 共Hz兲 damping freq. 共Hz兲 its bandwidth.
This paper studies the use of yaw velocity feedback, as it offers
⫺0.11 6.13 ⫺0.11 6.13 the flexibility for passive or active implementation. For the pas-
⫺0.11 6.13 ⫺0.11 6.13
0 0 sive stabilization, a damper is placed between each wheelset and
1.0 37.3 1.0 37.3 vehicle body which will provide an extra safety measure in the
1.0 64.7 1.0 64.7 case of actuator failure. However, the active stabilization is pre-
0.21 0.93 0.22 0.97 ferred because actuators will be required to implement the guid-
0.21 0.93 0.22 0.97
ance control anyway and also an adaptive scheme may then be
developed to give adequate damping at different vehicle speeds.
The stabilization effort for the leading and trailing wheelsets can
be expressed in Eqs. 共9兲 and 共10兲,
y wa ⫽y w1 ⫹y w2 , y wb ⫽y w1 ⫺y w2 ,
␺ wa ⫽ ␺ w1 ⫹ ␺ w2 , ␺ wb ⫽ ␺ w1 ⫺ ␺ w2 , T w1 s ⫽C w • 共 ␺˙ w1 ⫺ ␺˙ v 兲 , (9)
–

␾ wa ⫽ ␾ w1 ⫹ ␾ w2 , ␾ wb ⫽ ␾ w1 ⫺ ␾ w2 ,
y ta ⫽y t1 ⫹y t2 , y tb ⫽y t1 ⫺y t2 ,
1/R ta ⫽1/R 1 ⫹1/R 2 , 1/R tb ⫽1/R 1 ⫺1/R 2 .
All variables are the sums or differences between the correspond-
ing variables of the two wheelsets or the track geometries at the
two wheelsets, in particular ÿ ra ÿ rb represent the lateral centrifu-
gal forces due to the track curvature and cant angle, and ␪¨ ra ␪¨ rb
are angular accelerations due to curve transitions of the track.
Table 1 shows eigenvalues of the two modes for the passive
共uncontrolled兲 vehicle. The eigenvalues in the first two lines rep-
resent the unstable kinematic modes of the two wheelsets and the
eigenvalue at the origin (s⫽0 in third line兲 indicates the missing
guidance action caused by the two wheels being able to rotate
freely. The fourth and fifth lines give the eigenvalues of the
wheelset high frequency mode, whereas the lower frequency
modes for the lateral and yaw motions of the vehicle body are
shown in the last two lines. Clearly it is necessary both to stabilize
the wheelset kinematic mode and to provide the track following
control.
3.1 Wheelset Stabilization. It can be readily demonstrated
by applying standard frequency analysis methods to Figs. 2 and 3
that the wheelset stabilization can be achieved by using one or a
combination of three wheelset variables as feedback: the yaw
angle, the yaw velocity and the lateral acceleration. Figure 4
shows the root locus diagram of the lateral mode with the different
feedback measurements, and similar results can be obtained for
the yaw mode. As shown in the diagram, the achievable damping
ratio of the kinematic mode is limited with the yaw angle feed-
T w2 s ⫽C w • 共 ␺˙ w2 ⫺ ␺˙ v 兲 . (10)
–
The control gain is selected using the frequency design method
with the assistance of Figs. 2 and 3. In this case, the decoupled
lateral and yaw modes are very similar to each other as indicated
in Table 1 and therefore the same control gains are selected for the
two modes resulting in the local control for each wheelset as
shown in Eqs. 共9兲 and 共10兲. Also the body yaw rate, which has
little effect on the stability, is added in the controllers so that the
relative yaw velocity between the body and each wheelset can be
used which can be provided by measuring the actuator movement
directly.
3.2 Guidance Control. An independently rotating wheelset
does not have the ability of self-curving/centring, i.e., it will not
be able to follow the track by itself without making flange contact.
This problem is caused by the two wheels being able to rotate
freely which, from the control point of view, is indicated by the
zero eigenvalue for each wheelset as given in Table 1.
An obvious way to restore the guidance action of the wheelset
is to control the wheel-rail deflections directly. This will be of
course very expensive to achieve in practice 共because the feed-
back is not available兲 and an alternative must be found. This paper
proposes a control method derived from the fundamental feature
of the solid axle wheelset that enables its self-curving action, i.e.,
two wheels rotating at the same speed. Although there is no
‘‘hard’’ connection between the two wheels on an IRW axle, a
control action can be formulated such that the actuator will steer
the axle to achieve the zero-speed difference. This approach adds
a damping effect between the two wheels via the active means,
however, it does not result in the stiff connection of the solid axle
wheelset which forces the two wheels to be at the same angular
position 共rather than velocity兲 at all times. Equations 共11兲 and 共12兲
show the guidance actions for the front and rear wheelsets on the
vehicle, respectively. The mathematical explanation is that this
guidance action effectively moves the eigenvalue at the origin to
somewhere in the negative half plane,

T w1 g ⫽K w • ␾˙ w1 , (11)
–

T w2 g ⫽K w • ␾˙ w2 . (12)
–

The important practical implication is that the relative wheel

Fig. 4 Root locus diagram of the lateral mode
speed will already be available because wheel speeds are mea-
sured for controlling wheel slide during braking.
3.3 Speed Adaptation. Wheelset dynamics are speed de-
pendent and frequencies of both the kinematic and high frequency
modes of a wheelset vary with the wheelset travelling speed, but
the variations are nonlinear functions of the speed. In general a
vehicle stabilized for high-speed operations will remain stable at
lower speed, but the guidance on both curved and random tracks
tends to be poor resulting in unacceptably large wheel-rail lateral

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 Table 2 Control gains of the full state feedback optimal controller

For wheelset 1 For wheelset 2

Lateral velocity of wheelset 1 ⫺2.5282⫻10 4
1.2395⫻101
Lateral displacement of wheelset 1 ⫺4.7478⫻106 4.6510⫻102
Yaw velocity of wheelset 1 ⫺8.2903⫻104 6.6830
Yaw angle of wheelset 1 ⫺1.2671⫻107 1.8065⫻103
Relative rotational velocity of two wheels of 2.4497⫻104 ⫺1.4791
wheelset 1
Lateral velocity of wheelset 2 1.2395⫻10 ⫺2.5282⫻104
Lateral displacement of wheelset 2 4.6510⫻102 ⫺4.7478⫻106
Yaw velocity of wheelset 2 6.6830 ⫺8.2903⫻104
Yaw angle of wheelset 2 1.8065⫻103 ⫺1.2671⫻107
Relative rotational velocity of two wheels of ⫺1.4791 2.4497⫻104
wheelset 2
Lateral velocity of body frame ⫺2.8207⫻104 ⫺2.8207⫻104
Lateral displacement of body frame ⫺3.0760⫻105 ⫺3.0760⫻105
Yaw velocity of body frame ⫺1.2614⫻105 1.2614⫻105
Yaw angle of body frame ⫺1.3789⫻106 1.3789⫻106

movements. Some form of gain scheduling or adaptation will be
necessary if the vehicle with active controls is to be used across a
wide range of speed. The adaptation of speed proposed in this
study is obtained based on engineering insight of the problem. The
stabilization action is set to be proportional to the square of the
vehicle speed, a measurement that is readily available on all
trains, and a constant value is used to compensate the low damp-
ing for very low speed operations. The steering control is made to
be proportional to the vehicle speed. Equations 共13兲 and 共14兲 give
the final control laws for the front and rear wheelsets, respectively.
These now include both stabilization and guidance functions,
which offers a very simple solution for the difficult problems of a
quite complex dynamic system,
T w1 ⫽ 共 C w0 ⫹C w •V s2 兲 • 共 ␺˙ w1 ⫺ ␺˙ v 兲 ⫹K w •V s • ␾
˙ ,
w1
T w2 ⫽ 共 C w0 ⫹C w •V s2 兲 • 共 ␺˙ w2 ⫺ ␺˙ v 兲 ⫹K w •V s • ␾
˙ .
w2
4 Simulation Results
To study the responses of the actively controlled vehicle on
different tracks, both deterministic and random track inputs are
used in the simulation. The deterministic track inputs for the speed
of 83.3 and 25 m/s are typical high- and low-speed railway curves
with constant radius of 3500 and 300 m, respectively. The curves
are connected to the straight track via transitions, which last
around 1 s 共80 and 24 m in the two cases兲 with a constant rate of
change of the radius. Note also that the track is canted during the
curve to reduce the lateral acceleration experienced by the passen-
gers. The random track input is derived from a filtered white noise
generator to give an appropriate power spectrum for the lateral
deviations.
For comparison purposes, results from two other vehicles have
been used. One is a passive vehicle with solid axle wheelsets
stabilised by mechanical yaw stiffness, and the other is a vehicle
with independently rotating wheelsets actively controlled by a full
state feedback optimal control. Table 2 gives the control gains.
Figure 5 compares the wheelset lateral displacements of the
three schemes on a curved track, where the vehicle speed is 83.3
m/s. The wheelsets of the passive vehicle are forced away from
their pure rolling positions by the stabilizing yaw stiffness in the
opposite directions. This will result in increased creepage between
the wheels and the track and hence undesirable wear. When the
independently rotating wheelsets are used, both the proposed ac-
tive controller and the full state optimal control achieve a good
control of the wheelsets. A pure rolling action is achieved with the
proposed control, while a more orderly control especially on curve
transitions is obtained with the optimal control, which is expected.
It should be noted that achieving close to pure rolling action for
the independently rotating wheelset is not as crucial as for the
solid axle wheelset, and the primary objective here is to produce a
good guidance control such that the wheelsets follow the track and
the flange contact is avoided.
The advantage of the active controls is better illustrated at
lower speed. Figure 6 compares the curving performances of the
different vehicles at the speed of 25 m/s. The large wheel-rail
displacement 共20 mm兲 of the passive system in this case would in
practice cause flange contact 共the wheel design is such that the
maximum available movement is typically around 10 mm兲, but
this effect is not represented by the linearized model used in this
study. With the proposed active control scheme, the wheelset lat-
eral displacement is only about 5 mm, therefore avoiding flange
contact. On transitions, the maximum movement observed with
the proposed controller is 6 –7 mm which is starting to enter the
(13) nonlinear region of the wheel-rail contact, but brief enough not to
be a major concern. It is possible to eliminate the problem com-
(14) pletely by modifying wheel rail profiles to effectively increase the
conicity for low speed and tight curves.
On straight track with random input, the active control also
demonstrates excellent tracking performance, even though the
wheel-rail deflections are not part of the feedback. Figure 7 shows
the lateral displacement of the front wheelset relative to the track
at the maximum vehicle speed of 83.3 m/s and similar results are
obtained for other speeds. The movements are such that the maxi-
mum deflection is only very occasionally reached—refinement of
the control law could reduce this if necessary.
One of the other design parameters of a railway vehicle is the
passenger ride comfort on the vehicle body and it is very impor-
tant that the active control scheme also improves the ride quality
共at least it should not be deteriorated兲. Table 3 compares the ride
Fig. 5 Wheelset lateral displacement „ Vs Ä83.3 mÕs, radius
Ä3500 m…

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 Table 3 Vehicle performance „rms values, Vs Ä83.3 mÕs… use only the basic and simple measurements and it provides a
practical and inexpensive solution for the difficult problems of a
Passive Optimal 共IRW兲 Proposed 共IRW兲
complex dynamic system.
Front 5.30% g 3.12% g 4.16% g It has been shown that the proposed controller is adaptive to the
Center 4.10% g 2.81% g 3.48% g vehicle speed and works well on both curved and random tracks.
Rear 5.06% g 3.32% g 4.41% g Excellent curving performance is achieved and there will be no
Overall 4.86% g 3.09% g 4.04% g
Act. torque N/A 1.6 kNm 1.1 kNm flange contact even on very low speed curves. The control scheme
Act. velocity N/A 24 m rad/s 33 m rad/s also improves the passenger ride comfort when compared with a
typical passive vehicle on the random track input.
Although an optimal control might outperform the proposed
scheme, the simplicity of the control structure and the simple
requirement of practical feedback measurement will be the posi-
quality 共the rms lateral acceleration兲 of the three vehicles and the tive arguments when considered for real applications.
control effort requirement of the active schemes. Clearly the pro-
posed control method improves the ride quality by 13–20% with
an overall improvement of 17% when compared with the passive Acknowledgment
vehicle, but not as much as the optimal control scheme. It seems The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the European
that the optimal control performs better on both curved and ran- Community for funding the Project No. BE97-4387, which made
dom tracks, but it requires a full state feedback with a state ob- this study possible.
server and a much more complex control structure.
The control torque required for the proposed control scheme is
lower than for optimal control, but the power requirements are
Appendix: Vehicle variables and parameters
fairly similar as the corresponding actuator velocity is higher. As
shown in the table, the average power requirement of each actua- Variables Definitions and values
tor is small, i.e., in the region of 30 W for both control schemes. Cs Lateral damping per wheelset 共37 kN s/m兲
C w0 , C w Stabilizing damping per wheelset 共1000, 5.49兲
f 11 , f 22 Longitudinal and lateral creep coefficients
5 Conclusions 共nominal 10 MN兲
g Gravity (9.8 m/s2 )
This paper has presented the development of a novel control I v, I w Vehicle yaw inertia (558,800 kg m2 ) and
scheme for the active steering of the independently rotating rail-
wheelset yaw inertia (700 kg m2 )
way wheelset. The controller has been intuitively formulated to I w1 Wheel inertia 100 (kg m2 )
Ks Lateral stiffness per wheelset 共511 kN/m兲
Kw Coefficient of active guidance control 共24兲
Lg Half gauge of wheelset 共0.7 m兲
Lv Half wheelset spacing of vehicle 共4.5 m兲
m v, m w Vehicle mass 共30,000 kg兲 and wheelset mass
共1250 kg兲
r0 Wheel radius 共0.45 m兲
R1 R2 Radius of the curved track at leading and trailing
wheelsets 共3500 m兲
T w1 , T w2 Control torque for leading and trailing
wheelsets, respectively
Vs Vehicle travel speed 共83.3 m/s兲
y t1 , y t2 Track lateral irregularity at leading and trailing
wheelsets
y w1 , y w2 , y v Lateral displacement of leading, trailing wheelsets
and body
␪ c1 , ␪ c2 Cant angle of the curved track at the leading
and trailing wheelsets (6 0 )
␭ Wheel conicity 共nominal value 0.2兲
Fig. 6 Wheelset lateral displacement „ Vs Ä25 mÕs, radius ␾ w1 , ␾ w2 Relative rotation angle of two wheels at leading
Ä300 m… and trailing wheelset
␺ w1 , ␺ w2 , ␺ v Yaw angles of leading, trailing wheelset
and vehicle body

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