Implementation of Steering Control of Full Scale Railway Vehicle Assembling Independently Rotating Wheels with Negative Tread Conicity

Utilization of independently rotating wheel attains benefits in low floor transit, while sacrifices the steering performance because of the deficiency of longitudinal creep forces. As a promising structure for improving steering performance of vehicle, independently rotating wheel with negative tread conicity was proposed previously, but the research on such structure still stays at the stage of simulation and scale model, while full scale vehicle experiment has not been implemented so far. To this end, the experimental validation of vehicle assembling independently rotating wheels with negative tread conicity is firstly implemented in present research. The vehicle system compatible with full scale rail is constructed and the stand of better curving performance is supported by experiment results. Moreover, as the traction is necessary for the practical operation of vehicle, the utilization of traction motors for further improving the curving performance of vehicle is naturally proposed in this research. The active steering control is attempted, and the results indicate that the further improvement of curving performance is achieved by means of proposed control scheme.