Semi-active Control Performance of Railway Vehicle Suspension Featuring Magnetorheological Dampers

A semi-active control of railway vehicle suspension system with magnetorheological (MR) damper is presented. At first a MR damper working in flow mode is designed. Performance testing is done for this damper with INSTRON machine. Then a mathematical model, modified Bouc-Wen model, is adopted to characterize the performance of the MR damper, with optimization method and experimental results of MR damper, the coefficients of the model are determined. A scaled half train model is set up including the model of the model of the MR damper in its suspension system and a semi-active control strategy is adopted to control the vibration of the system. Simulation results show that with the semi-active control the vibration of suspension system is well controlled