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A. Schirrer:
"Co-Simulation of Rail Car Body Vibration Control with SimPACK®";
VDM Verlag, Saarbrücken, 2010, ISBN: 978-3-639-30692-7; 123 pages.

In this work, an advanced active vibration control system acting on a railway vehicle multibody dynamic model is applied to show the possible reduction of rail car body vibration amplitudes and the resulting achievable ride comfort improvement for a series of excitation scenarios and varying placement of actuators and sensors. The best actuator positions, according to a state-of-the-art positioning criterion, are used to define a series of promising actuator configurations. The achievable performance with these configurations is then evaluated through cosimulation of the multibody system dynamics in the SimPACK® simulation environment, and the online vibration control algorithm in MatLab/SIMULINK®. This way, a meaningful analysis of the system in its full complexity is carried out, and the results show the achievable improvement in ride comfort. Besides the simulation, this work contains a step by step instruction of the controller design procedure, so that the simulation system, including the control part, can be adapted to new models, actuator/sensor configurations and control objectives with little effort. Critical decisions in the control design process are pointed out. Intermediate results show the necessity of more detailed modeling of the piezoelectric actuators to consider their limitations and to develop an appropriate control concept for simulation and, later on, the real system implementation. The actuator force is dependent on local strain and additionally influenced by a distinct hysteresis of the piezoelectric actuator. Using a control cascade with force measurement feedback, this behavior can be satisfactorily compensated within the physical limitations of the used actuator. The concluding result interpretation and outlook summarizes the capabilities of the applied approach and provides guidelines for the choice and placement of actuators for real railway vehicles.

co-simulation, vibration control, robust control, railway car body