Theoretical and experimental investigation of a stiffness-controllable suspension for railway vehicles to avoid resonance

In this paper, a semi-active suspension system, composed of variable stiffness (VS) magnetorheological (MR) dampers, was developed and investigated theoretically and experimentally, aiming to improve the ride comfort of high-speed train by avoiding the train body resonance. Firstly, a full-scaled high-speed train model with 17-degree-of-freedom (17-DOF), whose secondary lateral suspension was installed with two VS-MR dampers, was established. And the numerical evaluation on the performance of the VS suspension was conducted. Secondly, a scaled high-speed railway vehicle and the VS suspension were designed and manufactured for experimental evaluation on a vibration generating platform under different excitations. The experimental results are consistent with the numerical evaluation results, which show that the VS suspension can effectively avoid the train's resonance in lateral direction and greatly improve the ride comfort compared with the traditional suspension system.