The dynamics of perfect steering bogie vehicles and its improvement with a reconfigurable mechanism

Even since railway vehicles were invented, railway scientists and engineers have been putting a lot of effort in finding the solution to the fundamental conflict between vehicle stability in the lateral plane and vehicle's capability of negotiating curves. Many configurations of railway bogie vehicles have been proposed and applied to minimise the conflict. The purpose of the research project is i) to create new configurations that can decouple the basic conflict, ii) to investigate dynamic behaviour of the new configurations and iii) to conceive a new mechanism that can improve the dynamics of the new configurations. Three configurations of body-steered bogie vehicles have been set up in the research. The sufficient conditions for them to be capable of perfect steering have been derived. They are called perfect steering vehicles when they satisfy these sufficient conditions. Their curving ability, stability and ride performance have been investigated. To overcome the disadvantages of the perfect steering vehicles, the reconfigurable mechanism has been conceived. The improvement in the dynamic behaviour of the perfect steering vehicles with the reconfigurable mechanism has been demonstrated. A computer program has been developed to undertake the simulation. The steering capability of the perfect steering vehicles is much better than that of conventional bogie vehicles. There are two modes of instability in the perfect steering vehicles: low conicity instability and conventional instability in the perfect steering vehicle. The perfect steering vehicles can decouple the conflict between their conventional stability and curving. The improvement of stability and ride performance of the perfect steering vehicles is, however, limited by the low conicity instability. When the reconfigurable mechanism is applied, a body-steered bogie vehicle can become a perfect steering vehicle when on curves and can become a conventional bogie vehicle when in other circumstances. Low conicity instability can be eliminated when the reconfigurable mechanism is used. This class of vehicles possess the advantages of both conventional bogie vehicles and perfect steering vehicles, and thus, provide a very valuable solution for the fundamental conflicts between the stability and steering ability and between ride performance and stability of railway vehicles. The findings in this thesis have great significance in developing perfect steering vehicles.