Vertical Vibration Suppression of a Railway Vehicle by Damping Control of an Air Spring with Flow Control Valve

Air suspension systems are now widely used for the secondary suspension of railway vehicles. To improve the riding comfort of vehicles equipped with this system, the authors developed a semi-active damping control system of air suspension that has a flow control valve with variable orifice between an air spring and an auxiliary air chamber for Shinkansen vehicles. In order to confirm the effectiveness of damping control, a numerical simulation model of the air suspension system, which applied the equation of state for air, was constructed. The adequacy of the proposed model was demonstrated by comparison with the results of experiments. The authors demonstrated from the results of numerical simulations and experiments that the proposed system was able to decrease the vertical vibration above the air spring. In particular, in an excitation test under actual running condition, the system reduced the vertical vibration acceleration PSD peak value due to the natural vibration (at about 1.2Hz) by almost 60% compared with that of the case of not using this system.