Study on Car Body Tilting System Using Variable Link Mechanism

This study aims to analyze fundamental dynamical characteristics of a tilting railway vehicle using variable link mechanism for compensating both lateral acceleration that passengers feel and wheel load imbalance between inner and outer rails. Theoretical analysis is conducted to find "Perfect Tilting Condition" that is a geometric parameter set of link mechanism that can provide both zero lateral acceleration and zero wheel load imbalance simultaneously. This perfect tilting condition can be realized by changing the variable length of link mechanism so that this tilting control system is a kind of semi-active control. To change the length of link mechanism on curved section, optimal control theory is applied to the vehicle body tilting system with a newly developed variable link mechanism. From computer simulation and experiment using a scale model, it is clarified that the proposed tilting system is effective to suppress both over-centrifugal acceleration and wheel load imbalance.