Gain Scaling for Active Wheelset Steering on Innovative Two-Axle Vehicle

摘要

Within the Shift2Rail project Run2Rail, an innovative single axle running gear with only one suspension step is proposed. A composite material frame shall be used both as structural and as suspension element. To improve curving performance active wheelset steering control is introduced. The selected control aims to minimize the longitudinal creepage by controlling the lateral wheelset position on the track. A two-axle vehicle is created in the MBS program SIMPACK and co-simulation is established with Simulink. The control strategy used is a simple PID control. A set of run cases with different curves and speeds is selected to verify the performance. The control gain optimal for high non-compensated lateral acceleration (NLA) tends to produce unstable results for low speeds. Control gain scaling is introduced based on vehicle speed and online estimation of the curvature. The proposed gain scheduling approach maintains the simple control formulation still solving the instability problem. Gain scheduling allows use of optimal control gains for all combinations of curve radii and vehicle speed and thereby taking the full advantage that the active wheelset steering brings to a vehicle with single axle running gears.