Semi-active H∞ control of high-speed railway vehicle suspension with magnetorheological dampers

In this paper, semi-active H control with magnetorheological (MR) dampers for railway vehicle suspension systems to improve the lateral ride quality is investigated. The proposed semi-active controller is composed of a H controller as the system controller and an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) inverse MR damper model as the damper controller. First, a 17-degree-of-freedom model for a full-scale railway vehicle is developed and the random track irregularities are modelled. Then a modified BoucWen model is built to characterise the forward dynamic characteristics of the MR damper and an inverse MR damper model is built with the ANFIS technique. Furthermore, a H controller composed of a yaw motion controller and a rolling pendulum motion (lateral motion+roll motion) controller is established. By integrating the H controller with the ANFIS inverse model, a semi-active H controller for the railway vehicle is finally proposed. Simulation results indicate that the proposed semi-active suspension system possesses better attenuation ability for the vibrations of the car body than the passive suspension system.