Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

Control strategies for active steering of bogie-based railway vehicles

J. Pe! reza,*, J.M. Busturiaa, R.M. Goodallb
b

a
CEIT, Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal, 15, 20018 San Sebastian, Spain
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3RQ, UK

Received 24 September 2001; accepted 30 November 2001

Abstract
This paper investigates the improvement of the curving behaviour of conventional railway vehicles mounting bogies and solid
wheelsets through active control. Various possible control goals are considered and implemented using optimal control techniques,
and a comparative study of the performance of the different control strategies in an ideal deterministic track is carried out. Then
suitable sensor types and locations are selected for each control strategy and results are obtained taking into account stochastic
disturbances. The nal comparison between strategies is made in terms of performance and feasibility of implementation. r 2002
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Railways; Active control; Active steering; Optimal control; Kalman lter

1. Introduction
During many decades the main features of the design
of railway vehicles have remained unchanged. Their
ability to follow the track path is still determined by the
conic shape of the wheel proles rigidly mounted on an
axle, which couples the lateral and yaw movements
through the variations of the rolling radius and forces
the wheelset to follow the track. These wheelsets
show, however, an unstable behaviour when circulating
freely, which the designers avoid by joining wheelset
pairs through a bogie with connections of a suitable
stiffness. Such stabilizing mechanism constrains the
behaviour of the wheelsets so that their naturally good
riding properties are lost in curves, resulting in an
increase of wear and unbalancing the lateral contact
forces.
Some improvements have been achieved by using
additional mechanical links (Scheffel, 1995), generally
based on the idea that constraining the movements of
the wheelset that do not take part in the curving permits

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-943-212800; fax: +34-943213076.

E-mail address: xperez@ceit.es (J. P!erez).

stabilising the vehicle with lower stiffnesses related to

the movements involved in curving. However, there is
still a trade-off in design between curving performance
and stability that imposes in practice a limitation to the
maximum speed of operation of the vehicle. As new
technologies based on mechatronic approaches have
been developed, their application to decouple the
stability and curving problems of railway vehicles has
been foreseen by some researchers, who have proposed
various solutions (Goodall, 1997). Furthermore, as
some of the restrictions that justify the current mechanical conguration of the vehicles no longer apply, some
fundamentally new congurations that offer additional
advantages have been proposed (Wickens, 1993; Mei &
Goodall, 1999).
The aim of this study is to show the benets of the
actively steered vehicles over passively steered ones
making the minimum of changes in the original
mechanical conguration. Three different control strategies are proposed and their performance is compared
to the passive case by making simulations in an ideal
track without defects. Once the benets of the active
steering have been demonstrated the study is extended
to include practical issues such as response in the real
track and the sensors required to implement each
strategy.

0967-0661/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 7 - 0 6 6 1 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 7 0 - 9

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

1006

2. Case of study
A schematic plan-view representation of the bogievehicle conguration is shown in Fig. 1. The wheelsets
are mounted on the bogies through the primary
suspension and the vehicle body is supported by the
secondary suspension, both suspensions acting vertically
and in the horizontal plane. Each of the two suspension
levels is designed to cover a different type of function:
The primary stabilises the vehicle and the secondary
assures the riding comfort. In the active solutions yaw
actuators are located between the bogies and the
corresponding wheelsets. The passive longitudinal suspension can now be removed from the design, as its
function has been replaced by the active system.
Keeping it would not affect noticeably the performance,
but would greatly increase the actuation required.
However, it provides a safety mechanism in case of
failure of the active system.
A linearised plan-view model of the vehicle involving
the lateral and yaw degrees of freedom for the four
wheelsets, the two bogies and the body is used in the
calculations. The nal state-space realisation consists of
28 states. The case selected for this study is a curve of
radius R 1357 m and a track cant angle of 61 with the
vehicle travelling at a speed of 230 km/h.

For the comparison between the different solutions,

parameters that quantify the stability and the quality of
curving have to be dened. A minimum of a 10% closed
loop damping is set as stability requirement. Curving is
evaluated by 4 parameters:
*

Maximum lateral displacement of the wheelset with

respect to the track: It represents the ability of the
vehicle to follow the track. Large lateral displacements lead to ange contact, which in turn increases
wear.
Maximum attack angle of the wheelset: It has to be
limited for security considerations. Large angles of
attack increase the danger of derailment.
Maximum lateral wheel to rail contact force: The
maximum lateral contact force limits the maximum
speed achieved by a vehicle for track maintenance
considerations.
Wear: Minimising wear of the wheel and the rail
through the curve is one of the main objectives of the
research. Wear is estimated through wear indexes
using the formulas described in BRR (1996). The
value of overall wear index in all the wheels is the
assessment parameter considered.

3. Control strategies and design. Deterministic tracking

performance
The formulation of a goal for the control law that
satises all the conditions expressed in the previous
section is not straightforward. In fact, various strategies
that offer different advantages can be followed. Three of
those strategies are presented and evaluated here.
3.1. Strategy 1: Control of the wheelset lateral position
for pure rolling

Fig. 1. Plan view of a bogie vehicle.

Pure rolling of the wheels is considered to be a

desirable situation because it eliminates longitudinal
creep forces and therefore minimises wear. When
circulating in a curve the outer wheel has to cover a
longer distance than the inner wheel, so the rolling
radius of the two wheels has to be different if slip is to be
avoided. The magnitude of the lateral displacement
required for pure rolling is given by
er0
y
;
1
lR
where e is the half track clearance, r0 is the rolling
radius, l is the wheel conicity, and R is the curve radius.
A simple schematic representation of a control system
designed to make the wheelset seek the pure rolling
lateral position is shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen that
this strategy requires the knowledge of the curve radius
at every moment. This information can be obtained for
example from the position detection system described in

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

1007

Fig. 3. Diagram of the yaw moment control.

Fig. 2. Diagram of the lateral position control.

Garcia Mart!n, Ibarbia, Fossati, and Gimenez (1998)

that is currently being employed in tilting trains. Other
techniques based on estimation are also being developed
(Mei, Goodall, & Li, 1999).

3.2. Strategy 2: Control of the rail to wheelset yaw

moment for pure rolling
An alternative formulation for the pure rolling
condition can be made in terms of the contact forces.
When a wheelset is laterally displaced from the pure
rolling position, the actual rolling radius of the two
wheels changes due to their conicity; the rolling radius of
one of the wheels is increased while the other one is
reduced. Therefore the relative wheel to rail longitudinal
slip is in the opposite direction for each of the wheels. As
the contact forces between wheel and railcalled creep
forcesare dependent on the relative wheelrail slip, a
yaw moment is exerted on the wheelset by the contact
forces. In conclusion, the only situation in which the
creep forces will create no moment to the wheelset is
pure rolling (Shen & Goodall, 1997). As the only forces
acting on the wheelset apart from the contact forces are
the ones transmitted by the primary suspension, if the
inertia forces are neglected it can be stated that pure
rolling implies that no yaw moments are transmitted
from the bogie to the wheelset. A steering strategy that
controls the yaw moment applied on the wheelset can be
designed. It must be noted that this condition is
equivalent to removing the primary longitudinal suspension in the frequency range in which the control system
is acting, which makes the wheelset recover its good
natural curving properties. The stability is still governed
by the passive suspension, so the bandwidth of the
control system must be lower than the hunting
frequency. A simple schematic representation of a
control system of this type is represented in Fig. 3.

3.3. Strategy 3: Control of the relative angle between

wheelsets
As the centrifugal forces in the curve have to be
compensated by the lateral contact forces in all the
wheelsets, the best way to minimise their maximum
value is to make all of them equal. The creep forces in
the contact are mainly due to longitudinal creepages, so
the contact lateral force of a wheelset is dependent
on the attack angle. Therefore the objective of balancing
lateral contact forces can be expressed as the requirement of equal attack angles for the wheelsets as given:
cw1  cw2 0:

This condition can be expressed in terms of the relative

angle between the two wheelsets of the same bogie
(Endlicher & Lugner, 1990), which is a more adequate
measurement to build a control system. Lb being the
distance between the two wheelsets, the relative angle
required to get equal angles of attack can be written in
terms of the curve radius R:
a

Lb
:
R

The control system scheme is shown in Fig. 4. In this

case, as in strategy 1, it is necessary to have the
information about the curve radius to express the
control goal.
The design of the control laws for all the strategies is
performed using optimal control methods, which allow
designing robust controllers in a systematic way but
have the disadvantage of requiring full state feedback.
This problem will be overcome afterwards with the use
of a Kalman lter to estimate the states from a number
of measurements.
The application of a standard linear quadratic
method produces an optimal controller in the form of
a proportional gain matrix, which in the present case
gives a control action that is a linear combination of
displacements and speeds. This control structure has the
disadvantage of giving a constant error in the lateral
position in the presence of permanent disturbances,

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

1008

w1,
w1

Preview R

obj = Lb /R
-

+
Control

yw1, yw1

Tw1

b ,
b
Tw2

yb , yb

w2 ,
w2

Fig. 4. Diagram of yaw angle control.

yw1 , yw1
x

-K P
C

y
+

Fig. 6. Design model: states and inputs from the controller.

-KI

D
Fig. 5. Optimal PI controller block diagram.

which is the case of the vehicle circulating through a

curve. To avoid this problem an alternative formulation
that includes an integral term is adopted. The model of
system used for control design is presented in state-space
form as
x A  x B  u;
y C  x D  u;

where the output vector y represents the set of

conditions to minimise, which is different depending
on the strategy used. It is possible to reformulate the
LQR problem to include an integral term on the output
vector, leading to the control conguration shown in
Fig. 5. This new integral term removes effectively the
error due to permanent disturbances derived from
curving. The design of this optimal proportional
integral control applied to the active steering of railway
vehicles is further explained in Mei, Pe! rez, and Goodall
(2000).
For the application of an optimal control method it is
necessary to have a mathematical model of the system to
be controlled. The size of the model used for the design
of the controller determines the size of the controller
itself and therefore the complexity of the whole system
depends on the model used for the design. In the same
manner too a simple model can lose some important
features of the system that can make the performance of

the active system unsatisfactory. Therefore, it is interesting to reduce the design model as much as possible, as
long as no features of the behaviour that are relevant to
the control problem are lost. Considering intuitively that
the secondary suspension does not interfere with the
primary in the steering, a local control design approach
can be followed. Controls are designed using models of
the bogie and afterwards implemented locally in each
bogie of the complete vehicle. This approach has the
advantage of producing simpler controllers and requiring fewer feedback variables. The inputs from the
controller and the state variables of the model used for
control design are represented as given below and in
Fig. 6:
w1 yw2 y w2 cw2 c
w2 yb y b cb c
b ;
x yw1 y w1 cw1 c
u Tw1 Tw2 :

The values of the parameters and the equations of the

model used in the design are provided in Appendix A
and B, respectively.
Simulations have been carried with the three strategies
and comparative results in terms of the assessment
parameters are shown. It can be seen in Fig. 7 that
lateral displacements of the passive vehicle are much
larger than those of the actively steered vehicles.
Strategies 1 and 2 imply perfect rolling and therefore
they produce the same lateral displacement on the
constant curve. Strategy 3 does not directly include any
condition in this sense but it can be seen that in practice
the maximum lateral displacement is also limited in this
case, to a value slightly greater than that for the two
other strategies. The maximum angle of attack is
reduced in all the active solutions as shown in Fig. 8.
Figs. 9 and 10 show that there is also an important
reduction in wear and in the maximum lateral force. It

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

-3

1009

x 10

Passive
2.5

0
2
Wear index

Active: Strategies 1&2

-2

Active: Strategy 3
-4

1.5

-6

Active: Strategy 3
0.5

Active: Strategies 1&2

-8
0

Passive

10

15

20

25

20

25

time (s)

-10
0

10

15

20

25

Fig. 9. Maximum wear.

Time (s)

Fig. 7. Maximum lateral displacements.

-4

20

x 10

x 10

Passive

Maximum Lateral Efforts (N)

Attack Angle (rad)

15

Active: Strategies 1&2

10

Active: Strategy 3
5

-1

-2
Active: Strategy 3
-3
Active: Strategies 1&2
-4

-5

-5
0

10

15

20

25

Time (s)

Fig. 8. Maximum attack angle.

can be seen that, while strategy 1 and 2 minimise wear,

strategy 3 gives lower values of the maximum lateral
force.
In conclusion, it can be seen that all the active
solutions offer signicant performance improvements
compared to the passive vehicle, showing only minor
differences between them. Strategies 1 and 2 show a very
similar performance because they are two alternative
expressions of the same condition, but they have
different properties and requirements. Strategy 1 has
the disadvantage of requiring the values of the curve
radius and the wheel conicity to express the control goal.
In turn, strategy 2 can only be applied at low frequencies
because it does not stabilise the system, so it must not
interfere with the stability suspension.

-6

Passive

10

15
time (s)

Fig. 10. Maximum lateral contact forces.

4. Sensor positioning and performance in presence of

stochastic disturbances
In the previous section, different strategies to steer a
railway vehicle have been proposed. As the main
purpose was to validate the strategies rather than to
prove the effectiveness of the control method, the
simulations have been carried out under ideal conditions, assuming that full state feedback is available and
no track defects are present. Once the strategies have
been validated, the ability of the control methods to
follow the proposed reference in real operation conditions has to be demonstrated. The actual track path is
the sum of the deterministic path, which is considered to
be known, and track defects of stochastic nature. Only

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

1010

statistical information about the latter is available.

These disturbances have to be considered as a new
input to the system in the simulations.
Full state feedback is not realistic for economic
reasons, and only certain measurements will be available. As the control method requires the knowledge of
all the state variables, a state observer that reconstructs
the states from some given measurements is needed. A
Kalman lter has been designed using the mechanical
model of the vehicle. Statistical information of the
stochastic magnitudes involved in the process, in this
case the track defects, is also required. The lter is fed
with noisy measurements, so the statistical properties of
this noise are required as well. A diagram of the
resulting control system is shown in Fig. 11.
The Kalman lter assumes that the stochastic
magnitudes present in the process are white noise, which
is not true in the case of the track disturbances.
Differences between the actual system and the model
used for the design of the lter produce an estimation
error. This estimation error depends on which parameters are measured. The lter produces an estimation
of the states that is used by the optimal controller to
produce the control action. As the only function of the
estimation is to feed the controller, the evaluation of a
particular Kalman lter is not made in terms of the
estimation error, but in terms of the error in the
resulting control action. This means that the evaluation
of the behaviour of an estimator for a particular active
system will also depend on the controller itself, as the
estimation error of the state variables is weighted by the
controller gains.
Some sets of possible measurements have been
selected for evaluation. For the three strategies proposed
the best results have been obtained measuring absolute

velocity and acceleration of all the masses included in

the model. Therefore, seven accelerometers and seven
gyros are required for the best estimation of states.
Some other combinations substituting some of the gyros
by relative angle sensors and some of the accelerometers
by relative displacement sensors have shown fairly good
performance too, so they could be used instead if there is
any practical reason to do so. No verication of the
robustness of the estimation has been taken into account
in the assessment.
The evaluation of the results obtained from the
simulations is now made in terms of the error in the
tracking of the corresponding control goal for each
strategy. The tracking performance of strategy 1 is
shown in Fig. 12. It can be seen that the lateral
displacements of the wheelset are properly controlled.

-3

x 10

Goal

Active

-5

-10

Passive
-15
0

10

15

20

25

Fig. 12. Tracking error with strategy 1.

Controller
Bogie 1
Controller
Bogie 2

Estimated
States
Bogie 1

x 10

6
Passive

Estimated
States
Bogie 2

Kalman
Filter

Measurement

5
4
3
2

Command
Bogie 2

Command
Bogie 1

Actuators
Bogie 2

Actuators
Bogie 1

Real Vehicle

0
-1

Active

Fig. 11. Diagram of the complete control system.

Goal

-2
5

10

15

20

Fig. 13. Tracking error with strategy 2.

25

J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

Furthermore, the control system improves the ability of

the vehicle to follow the track not only in the curve, but
also on the straight track, in which it can be seen that
the values of the lateral displacements are lower than in
the passive case. The same features are observed with
strategy 3 in Fig. 14. Strategy 2 shows also a good
tracking, but it does not improve signicantly the
disturbance rejection compared to the passive solution
(Fig. 13); in this case the performance of the active
vehicle in the curve is very similar to that of the passive
vehicle on the straight track. This is because the
bandwidth of this controller is limited by the hunting
frequency, as the stability of the vehicle is still controlled
by the passive suspension.

-3

x 10

0.5

1011

5. Conclusion
This paper has presented three possible strategies to
improve the curving performance of bogie-based railway
vehicles through active steering. Local optimal controllers have been derived at bogie level and a
comparative study has been made with a linearised
vehicle model in ideal conditions. The results of the
simulations show that there is a lot to be gained from the
application of any of the three strategies compared with
the passive case, in terms of wear reduction and lateral
contact force balancing.
Once the strategies were validated, a study of the
performance of the control system has been carried out.
A set of measurements has been selected and the states
reconstructed through a Kalman lter. The simulations
performed in a track with defects show a satisfactory
tracking of the control goal for the three cases.

Goal
Active

0
-0.5

Acknowledgements
-1

Authors wish to acknowledge the support of the

European Community for funding the project BE974387, which made this study possible.

-1.5
-2
Passive

-2.5

Appendix A

-3
0

10

15

20

Fig. 14. Tracking error with strategy 3.

25

Variables and parameters of the vehicle are shown in

Table 1.

Table 1
yw1 ; yw2 ; yw3 ; yw4 ; yb1 ; yb2 ; yv
cw1 ; cw2 ; cw3 ; cw4 ; cb1 ; cb2 ; cv
Tw1 ; Tw2 ; Tw3 ; Tw4
R
yc
Vs
f11
f22
l
r0
e
Lv ; Lb
mv ; mb ; mw
Iv ; Ib ; Iw
Kpy
Kpc
Cpy
Cpc
Ksy
Ksc
Csy
Csc

Lateral displacement of the wheelsets, bogies and vehicle body

Yaw angles of the wheelsets bogies and vehicle body
Control torque applied on the wheelsets
Radius of the curved track (1357 m)
Cant angle of the curved track (61)
Vehicle speed (230 km/h)
Longitudinal creep coefcient (nominal 16370 kN)
Lateral creep coefcient (nominal 12610 kN)
Wheel conicity (nominal value 0.1)
Wheel radius (0.45 m)
Half gauge of wheelset (0.7 m)
Half spacing between two bogies (8.5 m) and half spacing between the two wheelsets in the same bogie (1.5 m)
Body mass (45920 kg), bogie mass (4000 kg) and wheelset mass (1800 kg)
Body yaw inertia (25,00,000 kg m2), bogie yaw inertia inertia (5000 kg m2) and wheelset yaw inertia (1480 kg m2)
Primary lateral stiffness per wheelset (40,000 kN/m)
Primary yaw stiffness per wheelset (31,519 kN/rad)
Primary lateral damping per wheelset (3%)
Primary yaw damping per wheelset (3%)
Secondary lateral stiffness per bogie (1900 kN/m)
Secondary yaw stiffness per bogie (819 kN/rad)
Secondary lateral damping per bogie (60 kN s/m)
Secondary yaw damping per bogie (1247 kN s/rad)

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J. P!erez et al. / Control Engineering Practice 10 (2002) 10051012

Appendix B. Equations of the dynamics of the bogie for

control design


2f22
y w1 Kpy yw1  2f22 cw1
mw y. w1 Cpy
Vs
 Cpy y b  Kpy yb  Cpy Lb c b  Kpy Lb cb 0;


2
. w1 2f11 le yw1 2f11 e Cpc c w1
Iw c
r0
Vs
Kpc cw1  Cpc c b  Kpc cb Tw1 ;


2f22
y w2 Kpy yw2  2f22 cw2
mw y. w2 Cpy
Vs
 Cpy y b  Kpy yb Cpy Lb c b Kpy Lb cb 0;


2
. w2 2f11 le yw2 2f11 e Cpc c w2
Iw c
r0
Vs
Kpc cw2  Cpc c b  Kpc cb Tw2 ;
mb y. b  Cpy y w1  Kpy yw1  Cpy y w2  Kpy yw2
2Cpy y b 2Kpy yb 0;
w1
Ib c. b  Cpy Lb y w1  Kpy Lb yw1  Cpc c
 Kpc cw1 Cpy Lb y w2 Kpy Lb yw2
w2  Kpc cw2 2Cpy L2 Cpc c b
 Cpc c
b
2Kpy L2b Kpc cb Tw1  Tw2 :

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