Model Design, Simulation and Control of Rail car Suspension System

The vibrations resulting from unpleasant motion and disturbances can be minimized via the use of classic or advance control systems. In this study, the dynamic modelling and simulation of classic controls for rail car suspension systems was carried out to investigate the effect of changes in the step response and phase margin during rail car movement. Using two degrees of freedom, the model was developed by representing of the rail car system with a schematic of the rail car body and its suspension followed by the generation of equations of motion. Thereafter, the dynamic simulation of the represented railcar system was simulated in the MATLAB-Simulink 2017a environment based on the equations of motion generated. In addition, the proportional, integral and derivative (PID) control was introduced to fine tune the parameters of the active suspension system of a rail car for optimum performance based on the Ziegler-Nichols tuning rules. The results obtained indicate that the phase response, bandwidth and phase margin were controlled effectively with the introduction of the PID control bringing about significant reduction in the amplitude of oscillation, vibration, noise, rise time as well as elimination of the steady state error.