Active control of airspring secondary suspension for improving ride comfort in presence of random track irregularity

The aim of this paper is to explore the possible benefits brought by the use of active control of the airspring secondary suspension for high speed railway vehicles; in this regard, active control is applied to reduce the vertical and pitch carbody oscillations in the low frequency range, according to the concept of skyhook damping. A concept is developed for the active airspring suspension, and a numerical model is derived for the vehicle equipped with the active suspension. The results obtained show that the use of active suspension control offers an important improvement of ride quality, by far larger than achievable with semi-active suspensions. On the other hand, the issue of air consumption is outline as a critical point of the proposed concept, requiring further research.