Active Steering of Railway Vehicles via DOBC

A novel control scheme for the active steering of railway vehicles is presented using disturbance observer based control (DOBC) techniques. A new DOBC technique for MIMO systems is developed. This is achieved by reforming the DOBC into the parameterisation of all stablising controllers and then the disturbance observer is designed to minimise the influence of disturbances. The developed DOBC scheme is then applied to the control of railway vehicles, where an LQG controller is designed when the vehicle runs on straight tracks and the disturbance observer is employed to improve the curving performance. This overcomes the difficulty in compromising the wheelset stability and the curving performance of railway vehicles. The simulation reveals that the curving performance of railway vehicles is significantly improved while the straight track performance/wheelset stability remains the same.