Experimental investigations on the semi-active control of a valve-driven secondary lateral damper for a high-speed rail vehicle

Passive suspensions cannot sufficiently reduce vehicle vibrations on tracks with poor irregularities or when the vehicle was operated at higher speeds. This study proposes three semi-active control algorithms for a secondary lateral damper to enable the vehicle to be operated on high-speed dedicated railways at 350 km/h and conventional low-speed railways at 160 km/h. A high-speed rail vehicle dynamics model with controllable dampers is built to study the feasibility of those algorithms through numerical investigations. Then, both field tests on track and lab tests on a full-scale roller rig were performed to examine the functionality of the controller hardware system and the valve-driven semi-active damper. Furtherly, a time-delay compensation based on the signal amplitude is developed and verified. Results from the on-track and roller rig tests state that the proposed semi-active control algorithms and the designed control system can effectively improve the ride quality of the vehicle when it is put into operation in different track conditions and at various speeds.