Control Alternatives for Yaw Actuated Force Steered Bogies

A new design for actively steered bogies (Simson S., 2007) has been proposed for tractive rollingstock to improve not only wheel rail wear and rolling contact fatigue but to also improve wheel rail adhesion. The new bogie design features forced steering with active yaw control of the secondary suspension. The control alternatives for the new bogie design are limited by the need for the control to act independently to wheel rail creep forces. Two control alternatives are presented, a full active method where the control is applied based on known track alignment and the vehicles position. And a semi active method where the track curvature is estimated from gyroscope inputs with no prior knowledge of the track and a target alignment is estimated. Copyright © 2008 IFAC