Mechatronic Development for Railway Vehicles of the Future

Kurzfassung

Railway vehicles have principally been designed by mechanical engineers since railways began in the early 1800s, i.e. before electronics and feedback control were invented. Today however they contain substantial amounts of electronic and computer control, in particular the traction systems which have been converted entirely. However, electronic control can also be applied to the vehicle suspension and guidance functions which can provide large improvements in performance. At first (and still today) these feedback controlled components have been added-on to a readily designed or existing mechanical system resulting often in some worth-while improvement. More recently new approaches of incorporation of sensors, controllers and actuators into the design process from the start enable vehicle designers to take advantage of different mechanical configurations which are not possible with a purely mechanical approach – in other words the true spirit of mechatronics, i.e. configurating and optimising mechanics and electronics jointly. This paper provides a brief survey of the state-of-the-art of the mechatronic development for railway vehicles and presents new research results of a related EC-research project (“Mechatronic Train”). The software tools which have been used for analysis, design and evaluation as well as a new concept of a mechatronic single-axis running gear , a special DLR-development are presented. This running gear is based on individually suspended wheels which are controlled by a differential torque improving stability and guidance. Two principal implementations of this running gear are described.