Using an Inerter-Based Suspension to Reduce Carbody Flexible Vibration and Improve Riding-Comfort

The riding-comfort of high-speed trains affects the travel experience of passengers, and the lightweight design technology of the carbody increases the flexible vibration and reduces passenger comfort. To this end, a vertical dynamics model of railway vehicles is established to demonstrate the potential of using passive inerter-based suspensions to reduce the flexible vibration of the carbody and improve riding-comfort. According to the characteristics of the inerter component, an appropriate inerter-based suspension is applied to the railway vehicle to reduce low-frequency resonance. The sum of the comfort indexes of the three reference points of the carbody is optimized as the objective function to improve the passenger comfort of the whole vehicle. The results reveal that the inerter-based suspension applied to the primary or secondary suspension has different effects on vehicle vibration. Compared with the traditional suspension, the riding-comfort using the inerter in both the primary and secondary suspension is improved by 21.3%, 9.3%, and 6.6%, respectively.