Vibration Suppression of Car-Body Tilting Vehicle Using Air Springs with Antiroll Damper

In recent years, air-spring-type tilting vehicles, which use air springs as the car-body tilt mechanism, have been employed, even in Shinkansen trains, to increase the operation speed on curved sections. On a test train running at a speed of about 300 km/h with the tilt mechanism, however, it was found that the car-body roll and lateral vibrations increased in compound curves where the plane and vertical curves overlapped. In this study, an analytical model of the air-spring-type tilting vehicle is developed, and a numerical simulation is carried out to clarify the high-speed curving behavior in a compound curve. Then an antiroll damper, which is installed between the car-body and the existing anti-rolling device, is examined as a countermeasure to reduce car-body vibration. As a result, it is shown that the vibration occurring in the compound curve is caused by the centrifugal force generated by the passage of the train on the vertical curve and the imbalance in stiffness between the left and right air springs during tilting. It is also shown that an antiroll damper has a potential to suppress the increase in car-body vibration in compound curves.