Mechatronics

In order to extend the train capacity and reduce the energy consumption per passen­ger, the vehicle concept of the NGT is con­figured as a double-deck high-speed multi­ple unit train set. This leads to the following list of requirements. The running gears

• have to meet all safety standards e.g. concerning running stability.
• have to allow a planar alleyway for pas­sengers at the lower level of a double-deck vehicle (low-floor design).
• have to contribute to the traction of the train set.
• have to reduce wear of the wheels and the rails
• have to reduce rolling noise.

Mechatronic systems for active steering and running gear control in principle offer an enormous potential for enhancements re­garding this list of demands, so that we are developing a concept for a novel mechatronic running gear, see figure below.

Unit with carrier and independently torque-controlled wheels for the mechatronic running gear.

Its major components are the feedback-con­trolled single wheels and the wheel carrier, which may be aligned along a curve radius. The wheel drives serve two purposes, they are responsible for traction and lateral motion of the wheel pair.  This way the carrier-wheels-unit may be adjusted to the middle of the track and may be steered into curves so that low-wear and -noise running characteristics are achieved.

A particular challenge of this project is to find an appropriate sensor concept that is reliable in daily train operation.

In the first step it is planned to design and to realise a first scaled prototype, so that advantages and disadvantages of the con­cept can be evaluated using the roller rig at our institute, see figure below.

Beside the application to high-speed trains, we also see a high potential of the concept even for urban transport systems, where low-floor, low-noise and low-wear charac­teristics are highly relevant as well.

Scaled roller rig M 1:5 at the institute