Modeling, simulation and slip control of a railway vehicle integrated with traction power supply

Studies on the modeling and simulation of the railway vehicle traction system play an active role in the operation and planning phase of railway electrification. In this paper, the longitudinal dynamic of a light rail vehicle was modelled and simulated in Matlab-Simulink. The traction system consists of two parallel motor groups, each of which is composed of two seperately-excited motors connected in series. The first simulation scenario represents how the traction system works in acceleration and braking modes with respect to a given speed change profile. Within this scenario, the time dependent responses of the motor armature and *Corresponding author: Caglar Uyulan, Department of Mechatronics Engineering, Graduate School of Science, Engineering and Technology, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey E-mail: [email protected] Reviewing editor: Duc Pham, University of Birmingham, UK Additional information is available at the end of the article ABOUT THE AUTHORS Caglar Uyulan received the BSc degree from Dokuz Eylul University in Mechanical Engineering Department, MSc and PhD degrees from Istanbul Technical University in Mechatronics Engineering in 2008, 2010, and 2017, respectively. From 2012 to 2016, he worked in several projects involving control and design of high speed railway vehicles, and EEG signal processing. His research interests include, nonlinear control, signal processing, and mechatronics system modeling. Metin Gokasan received the BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, in 1980, 1982, and 1990, respectively, all in electrical and control engineering. From 2004 to 2006, he conducted research at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Fairbanks, as a visiting scholar and worked in several projects involving the control of HEVs and sensorless control of induction motors. His research interests include the control of electrical machinery, power electronics and electrical drives, control of hybrid electric vehicles, and mechatronics systems. Seta Bogosyan received her BSc and MSc degrees from in ITU Electrical Engineering in 1981 and 1983 and conducted her PhD in control engineering jointly in UC Santa Barbara and ITU between 1987 and 1991. She has taught in UCSB in 1991, and served as a professor of electrical engineering at ITU between 1992 and 2003, and then as a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks until 2016. She is currently with National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research interests are in cyber-physical systems, control of robots and autonomous platforms, tele robotics and open test beds. PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT Railway vehicles are constantly being developed to shorten travel times. Therefore, they need powerful traction system to meet increasing speed demands. The development of traction control strategies to achieve optimal traction ensures that safe and effective driving, while reducing unwanted slip phenomenon occured between the wheel-rail. The behavior of a railway vehicle with bogie traction, which the slip control strategy was implemented, was evaluated by using simulation approach to achieve more effective results in terms of optimizing traction conditions. The railway traction consists of two motor groups and each motor group is connected in series. The traction system was modeled and simulated to investigate the motor stator currents, traction torque, adhesion and resistance forces with respect to a given reference speed profile. The adhesion force was calculated during a simulation scenario under different contact conditions. The simulation results confirm that the proposed control strategy achieve the optimal slip ratio. Received: 15 February 2017 Accepted: 25 March 2017 First Published: 31 March 2017 © 2017 The Author(s). This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 license. Page 1 of 17 Caglar Uyulan