Smart-Bogie: semi-active lateral control of railway vehicles

The topic of this paper is the design and analysis of a control system for the lateral movement of the carbody in a train. The control system is implemented via semi-active electro-hydraulic dampers located on the secondary-suspension that links the bogie to the structure of the carbody of the train. The entire design procedure is outlined: the semi-active damper is accurately modeled; using the actuator model, the control strategies are implemented and tuned on a vehicle simulator; the best control strategies then are implemented and tested on a realistic laboratory test-bench, which accurately reproduces the lateral dynamics of a train. A wide range of semi-active control strategies is tested. Among them, the best performing and most efficient is a recently-proposed strategy which requires only a single sensor located cabin-side.