Development of an active-controlled damper for railway vehicle couplers for improving the ride comfort

为了提高铁路客运列车的乘坐舒适性，本课题研制了一种铁路车辆车钩主动控制减振器。研究结果总结为：a)采集了铁路旅客列车开、停车过程中的加速度数据。构造了一个用于计算加速度产生的抖动的实时滤波器。研究了乘坐舒适性与加速度/挺度的关系。B)在对电流变液流体动力学进行理论分析的基础上，设计了一种由液压缸和旁路缝隙阀组成的主动控制电流变阻尼器的样机。通过实验研究了样机的基本力速特性，验证了样机的功能。设计了实际尺寸的阻尼器。c)利用样机进行主动控制实验。实验结果表明，在恒速下，阻尼器的减振能力可提高100%，活塞反作用力仍能保持在预定的目标，精度令人满意。实验结果还证实，在模拟旅客列车实际运行状态的活塞正弦位移条件下，活塞反作用力仍能保持在规定的目标。此外，实验还验证了活塞反作用力可以被控制到预定的轨迹，这表明所研制的阻尼器可以用于控制冲击力。d)另外，由于电流变液的不均匀，为了在更大范围内获得更高的控制精度，还需要继续研究更复杂的控制方法。

In this project, an active-controlled damper for railway vehicle couplers was developed in order to improve the ride comfort of the passenger railway trains. The research results were summarized as :a) Acceleration of railway passenger trains during the starting-up and the stopping was collected. A real time filter for calculation the jerk from the acceleration was constructed. Relationship between ride comfort and acceleration/jerk was investigated. The results show that the root-mean-square of both acceleration and jerk affect the ride comfort of passengers.b) Based on the theoretical analysis of the fluid dynamics of the Electrorheological (ER) fluid, a prototype of an active controlled ER damper consisting of a hydraulic cylinder and a bypass slit valve was developed. The fundamental force-velocity characteristics of the prototype were investigated using the prototype through experiments, and function of the prototype was verified. Also a real size damper was designed.c) Active control experiments were conducted using the prototype. Experimental results confirmed that at constant velocities, the damper capacity could be increased by 100%, and piston reactive force can be retained at the prescribed target with satisfactory accuracy. Experimental results also confirmed that under the condition of sinusoidal displacement of the piston, which simulates the real running condition of a passenger train, the piston reactive force can also be retained at the prescribed target. Further, experiments also verified that the piston reactive force could be controlled to follow the preset trace, which suggested that the developed damper can be used to control the jerk.d) It is also understood that because of the non-uniformity of the ER fluid, in order to obtain higher control accuracy in a wide range, further studies of a more sophisticated control method should be continued.