Anti-Slip Traction Control of Railway Vehicle Based on Estimated Wheel-Rail Contact Condition

Abstract

In railway traction system adhesion is an important factor to accelerate the vehicles quickly. If applied tractive effort is greater than allowed by the adhesion level at the wheel-rail interface then wheel slip occurs. Wheel slip is an undesirable phenomenon which reduces the life of mechanical parts thus increasing the overall maintenance cost. Several techniques have been proposed to prevent the wheel-slip in ever-changing weather and environmental conditions. But the available measures are not effective to eliminate the problem completely. This paper presents a novel idea to develop an intelligent mechanism to tackle the problem of wheel slip. The proposed method first indirectly identifies the available adhesion level by analysing the changes in wheelset dynamics with respect to changes in contact condition. The estimated adhesion information is then used to optimize the traction forces in order to avoid slip. The efficacy of the proposed solution is demonstrated with the help of simulation results.