Smart‐Bogie: Semi‐Active Lateral Control of Railway Vehicles

The topic of this paper is the design and analysis of a control system for the lateral movement of the carbody in a train. The control system is implemented via semi‐active electro‐hydraulic dampers located on the secondary‐suspension that links the bogie to the structure of the carbody of the train. The entire design procedure is outlined: the semi‐active damper is accurately modeled; using the actuator model, the control strategies are implemented and tuned on a vehicle simulator; the best control strategies then are implemented and tested on a realistic laboratory test‐bench, which accurately reproduces the lateral dynamics of a train. A wide range of semi‐active control strategies is tested. Among them, the best performing and most efficient is a recently‐proposed strategy which requires only a single sensor located cabin‐side.