A novel anti-slip control approach for railway vehicles with traction based on adhesion estimation with swarm intelligence

Anti-slip control systems are essential for railway vehicle systems with traction.In order to propose an effective anti-slip control system,adhesion information between wheel and rail can be useful.However,direct measurement or observation of adhesion condition for a railway vehicle in operation is quite demanding.Therefore,a proportional–integral controller,which operates simultaneously with a recently proposed swarm intelligencebased adhesion estimation algorithm,is proposed in this study.This approach provides determination of the adhesion optimum on the adhesion-slip curve so that a reference slip value for the controller can be determined according to the adhesion conditions between wheel and rail.To validate the methodology,a tram wheel test stand with an independently rotating wheel,which is a model of some low floor trams produced in Czechia,is considered.Results reveal that this new approach is more effective than a conventional controller without adhesion condition estimation.