Assessment of Actuator Requirements for Active Railway Suspensions

This paper looks into ways of improvising actuator technologies for railway secondary suspensions for an aim to draw near the possibility of fully active railway vehicle. An investigation of the effects of actuators for secondary suspensions has showed the degradation in ride quality due to the actuator limitations. This paper looks into actuator technologies for railway suspensions to realise the full benefits of active suspensions which have been studied rigorously for the past three decades. Electromechanical and Electrohydraulic actuators across the secondary suspension are used, and the effects of these actuator dynamics is analysed. A simple control law is used for assessment to highlight the degradation in the suspension performance.