Control Of Railway Vehicle Lateral Semi-Active Suspensions Employing DMC

With the speed-raising, the control of lateral semi-active suspension system of railway vehicle has become a more and more important problem in railway vehicle manufacturing. For the control of lateral semi-active suspension system of railway vehicle, a major problem is the difficulty to establish an accurate model of the vehicle structure. Dynamic Matrix Control is one of the most influential control algorithms in model predictive control field. Instead of using the structure model, Dynamic Matrix Control uses the step response model and has been widely used in engineering. Based on the theory of Dynamic Matrix Control, in this paper, Dynamic Matrix Control was applied to the control of lateral semi-active suspension system of railway vehicle.The general situation of the development of railway vehicle semi-active suspension and its control algorithm was briefly introduced. Basics of the lateral vibration of railway vehicle were also introduced, including the lateral model of railway vehicle, the track irregular signal and the criterion that was used to evaluate the damping performance of vehicle suspension system. A 17 degrees lateral model of railway vehicle was given in the thesis. The track irregular signal was simulated. Dynamic Matrix Control was described in detail, including the process of Dynamic Matrix Control and the control strategy of the damper. In this thesis, the strategy, which was in some previous literatures, that controlling the two dampers, which were respectively installed on different bogies, by the same control commands, was proved to be unreasonable. And a new control strategy, which used different control commands to control the two dampers, was proposed. The most important advantage of Dynamic Matrix Control is using the step response model. This property made it's possible to improve the precision of the controller, without an unacceptable complexity. The step response model of the 17 degrees lateral model was used to design the dynamic matrix controller. Based on Genetic Algorithms and single design speed, the parameters of the controller were modulated, by computer simulation. Through theoretical analysis and computer simulation, the modulation strategy of the parameters of the controller, which works under variable speed, was also presented.