RIDE COMFORT ANALYSIS OF SMART MATERIAL BASED SECONDARY SUSPENSION IN RAILWAY VEHICLE

Abstract

With fast advancement of railway transportation, maintaining stability and reduction in unwanted vibration is become very emerging research topic in order to make ride more comfortable. It is critical to improve riding comfort on railway vehicle in order to make them a more comfortable mode of transportation. Acoustic sound, smell, vibration, temperature, seat design, visual stimuli and humidity all affect ride comfort, which is important characteristic for dynamic performance aspects of railway vehicle. There are many known ways of reducing the value of ride comfort index and reducing the vibrations like use of air spring instead of steel spring in bogie, using semi active dampers and using of MRE materials. In this our study is focused on secondary suspension system for reducing the undesirable vibrations by using smart material in damper. Out of all the factors which are affecting the comfort of passengers, vibrations require critical attention because of there are adverse effect upon the human body. There are several theoretical methods for evaluating ride comfort in the vertical direction. In this we have used Sperling’s method for the calculations of ride index. A comparison study on ride index is done with or without use of MR damper in secondary suspension system. All study is done on quarter car model of a railway vehicle which is modelled with the help of Simulink/ MATLAB. Also we defined some of the future scopes for this project which will further make the ride more comfortable. Also generate new concepts from its pre-existing knowledge that would be helpful for making variant and improved design.