1. A low-cost tilting control system

  • Development of a tilting control system at a cost of one third that of the existing setup
  • Reduction of the index of motion sickness on titling vehicles by 30% or over

The RTRI developed a low-cost tilting control system at a cost of about one third that of the existing setup. The new system can also be used for existing natural tilting vehicles.

As the tilt angle control mechanism of this system has no track data, it predicts the centrifugal over-acceleration based on the running and yawing angular speeds of the preceding vehicle to determine the target tilt angle (Fig. 1). This eliminates the need for a running-position detection function and vehicle-to-vehicle telecommunication equipment, thereby realizing low-cost tilting-controlled pendulum vehicles. The system uses an electro-hydraulic actuator (EHA) for vehicle body tilting. As it offers the same performance as conventional tilting dampers when the tilt angle is not controlled, it can be replaced with the tilting damper of conventional tilting vehicles.

To control the tilt angle of the head vehicle in cases where there is no preceding adjacent vehicle, the RTRI developed a technique to improve the delay in calculating the target tilt angle by using an acceleration sensor. It was confirmed through simulation that the delay in calculation is cut to less than half that of the conventional method.

Regarding the effectiveness of the system in reducing the symptoms of motion sickness, the RTRI confirmed that the value of exposure to the condition (an index to evaluate the degree of motion sickness based on cumulative low-frequency vibration around 0.3 Hz) was cut by 30% or more in a running test. This system effectively reduces centrifugal over-acceleration due to delayed vehicle body tilting at curve entry/exit (Fig. 2).




HOME > Major Results of Research and Development in Fiscal 2007 > III Rapidity/Convenience

HOME
RTRI HOME

Copyright(c) 2008 Railway Technical Research Institute, Tokyo Japan, All rights reserved.