Identification of Maximum Road Friction Coefficient and Optimal Slip Ratio Based on Road Type Recognition

The identification of maximum road friction coefficient and optimal slip ratio is crucial to vehicle dynamics and control.However,it is always not easy to identify the maximum road friction coefficient with high robustness and good adaptability to various vehicle operating conditions.The existing investigations on robust identification of maximum road friction coefficient are unsatisfactory.In this paper,an identification approach based on road type recognition is proposed for the robust identification of maximum road friction coefficient and optimal slip ratio.The instantaneous road friction coefficient is estimated through the recursive least square with a forgetting factor method based on the single wheel model,and the estimated road friction coefficient and slip ratio are grouped in a set of samples in a small time interval before the current time,which are updated with time progressing.The current road type is recognized by comparing the samples of the estimated road friction coefficient with the standard road friction coefficient of each typical road,and the minimum statistical error is used as the recognition principle to improve identification robustness.Once the road type is recognized,the maximum road friction coefficient and optimal slip ratio are determined.The numerical simulation tests are conducted on two typical road friction conditions（single-friction and joint-friction）by using CarSim software.The test results show that there is little identification error between the identified maximum road friction coefficient and the pre-set value in CarSim.The proposed identification method has good robustness performance to external disturbances and good adaptability to various vehicle operating conditions and road variations,and the identification results can be used for the adjustment of vehicle active safety control strategies.

Re-adhesion control strategy based on the optimal slip velocity seeking method

In the railway industry, re-adhesion control plays an important role in attenuating the slip occurrence due to the low adhesion condition in the wheel-rail inter- action. Braking and traction forces depend on the normal force and adhesion coefficient at the wheel-rail contact area. Due to the restrictions on controlling normal force, the only way to increase the tractive or braking effect is to maximize the adhesion coefficient. Through efficient uti- lization of adhesion, it is also possible to avoid wheel-rail wear and minimize the energy consumption. The adhesion between wheel and rail is a highly nonlinear function of many parameters like environmental conditions, railway vehicle speed and slip velocity. To estimate these unknown parameters accurately is a very hard and competitive challenge. The robust adaptive control strategy presented in this paper is not only able to suppress the wheel slip in time, but also maximize the adhesion utilization perfor- mance after re-adhesion process even if the wheel-rail contact mechanism exhibits significant adhesion uncer- tainties and/or nonlinearities. Using an optimal slip velocity seeking algorithm, the proposed strategy provides a satisfactory slip velocity tracking ability, which was demonstrated able to realize the desired slip velocity without experiencing any instability problem. The control torque of the traction motor was regulated continuously to drive the railway vehicle in the neighborhood of the opti- mal adhesion point and guarantee the best traction capacity after re-adhesion process by making the railway vehicle operate away from the unstable region. The results obtained from the adaptive approach based on the second- order sliding mode observer have been confirmed through theoretical analysis and numerical simulation conducted in MATLAB and Simulink with a full traction model under various wheel-rail conditions.

Analysis of torque transmitting behavior and wheel slip prevention control during regenerative braking for high speed EMU trains

The wheel-rail adhesion control for regenerative braking systems of high speed electric multiple unit trains is crucial to maintaining the stability,improving the adhesion utilization,and achieving deep energy recovery.There remain technical challenges mainly because of the nonlinear,uncertain,and varying features of wheel-rail contact conditions.This research analyzes the torque transmitting behavior during regenerative braking,and proposes a novel methodology to detect the wheel-rail adhesion stability.Then,applications to the wheel slip prevention during braking are investigated,and the optimal slip ratio control scheme is proposed,which is based on a novel optimal reference generation of the slip ratio and a robust sliding mode control.The proposed methodology achieves the optimal braking performancewithoutthewheel-railcontactinformation.Numerical simulation results for uncertain slippery rails verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.