Modeling, Control Design, and Performance Evaluation of High Speed Ground Vehicle Dynamics

Abstract

The interest in developing high speed ground transportation systems is one reason for directing attention to the modeling and simulation of the dynamic behavior of vehicle systems. Rail-guided vehicles; i.e., conventional railways, advanced railway' systems, or magnetically levitated trains, represent the practical implementation of such ground transportation systems. Ohe computer program that is especially well suited for the analysis of rail-guided vehicles is the multibody program MEDYNA. This paper demonstrates the application of MEDYNA for control law design and to performance evaluation of such advanced vehicles. A brief description is made of the modeling requirements of magnetically levitated systems, along with a summary of some of the related capabilities and computational methods of MEDYNA. As a case study, analysis of a vehicle based on the German TRANSRAPID system is presented. System matrices of a simplified vehicle model are established and control design is performed with the aid of MATLAB. Finally, performance evaluation is studied with a complex model of the TRANSRAPID vehicle and elastic guideways.