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Control Engineering Practice 15 (2007) 4355 www.elsevier.com/locate/conengprac

Estimation of railway vehicle suspension parameters for condition monitoring

Ping Lia,, Roger Goodalla, Paul Westonb, Chung Seng Lingb, Colin Goodmanb, Clive Robertsb
b a Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU, UK Department of Electronic, Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

Received 4 March 2005; accepted 27 February 2006 Available online 17 April 2006

Abstract This paper investigates the problem of parameter estimation for railway vehicle suspensions so as to provide information to support condition-based (instead of calendar-based) maintenance. A simplied plan view railway vehicle dynamical model is derived and a newly developed RaoBlackwellized particle lter (RBPF) based method is used for parameter estimation. Computer simulations are carried out to assess and compare the performance of parameter estimation with different sensor congurations as well as the robustness with respect to the uncertainty in the statistics of the random track inputs. The method is then veried practically using real test data from a Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle with only bogie and body mounted sensors, and some preliminary results are presented. r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Railway vehicle dynamical modelling; Parameter estimation; Condition monitoring; RaoBlackwellized particle lter; Extended Kalman lter

1. Introduction With the increased ow of rail trafc, it is necessary to ensure the availability of rail services as a whole and that they operate safely and punctually. To avoid unplanned disruptions and thus minimize the overall system downtime so as to meet the growing demands on cost efciency, reliability and safety for railway vehicle and rail services, a condition-based (instead of calendar-based) maintenance system for railway vehicles is highly desirable. The research presented in this paper is a part of the research project known as ERCIR (Enhanced Rail Contribution by Increased Reliability) (see Goodman et al., 2005; Weston et al., 2003) funded by UK Department for Transport, and aims to detect fault or degraded vehicle/track system behaviour as early as possible and to provide further
Corresponding author. Now with the Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK. Tel.: +44 116 2522874; fax: +44 116 2522619. E-mail address: pl62@le.ac.uk (P. Li).

information on the cause of fault and degradation for maintenance. However, the attention of this paper will be focussed on the condition monitoring of railway vehicle dynamic system. The condition monitoring of railway vehicles has traditionally relied on signal processing and knowledgebased techniques, e.g. statistical limit value checking, PSD analysis, correlation analysis, etc. (see e.g. Sunder, Kolbasseff, Kieninger, Rohm, & Walter, 2001) where no analytical system model is employed and only qualitative or empirical system knowledge is used. On the other hand, modelling techniques and specic models for railway vehicle dynamic systems are well-developed (Li & Goodall, 1998; Mei, Nagy, & Goodall, 1999). Certainly there is greater potential for improvement in the performance of condition monitoring system if the a priori knowledge or information captured by the models is fully used. Some work has been undertaken in this area (e.g. Li & Goodall, 2004). Basically, when model-based techniques are adopted, it has been shown in Li and Goodall (2004) that abrupt/or hard faults in a vehicle suspension system

0967-0661/$ - see front matter r 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.conengprac.2006.02.021

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44 P. Li et al. / Control Engineering Practice 15 (2007) 4355

can be detected by monitoring the innovation from a Kalman lter based on the vehicle dynamic model, whereas the detection of a drift like fault or performance degradation can be achieved by monitoring or estimating the key physical parameters in the vehicle dynamic system. This paper will concentrate on the estimation of some physical parameters in vehicle suspension system which determine the vehicle dynamic model so as to provide an early warning of a fault or performance degradation, and also provide information to support condition-based maintenance. The rest of paper is organized as follows. Section 2 develops a simplied linearized plan view vehicle dynamic model, based on which the parameter estimation is performed. Section 3 briey introduces the RaoBlackwellized particle lter (RBPF) based parameter estimation method used in this paper, then simulation studies are performed. The results of parameter estimation both from simulation and from real test data are presented and compared in Section 4, with the conclusions and future work in Section 5. 2. Modelling of railway vehicle dynamics 2.1. System description A Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle manufactured by Alstom Transport is used for the study in this paper. A railway vehicle model is a general collection of masses and wheelsets connected by a range of different suspension elements or constraints which, in general, exhibit some kind of non-linear characteristics. The dynamic behaviour

of a railway vehicle is also governed by the wheelrail contact mechanism which is determined by the creep force at the wheel/rail contact point combined with the coning of the wheels. The way in which the force is generated at the rolling contact between wheel and rail is quite complex, and relies upon the concept of creep, a phenomenon which arises from the elastic deformations of the material around the contact patch (see e.g. Wickens, 2003). Although very complex non-linear simulation models are available using MBS (multi body simulation) tools, these are too complicated and it is necessary to develop appropriately simplied models which capture the essential dynamic characteristics related to the problem being considered. The current work focus on the problem that affects running stability for which the lateral and yaw modes are important, thus only a plan view dynamic model is necessary. Fig. 1 shows plan view of a simplied Coradia Class 175 bogie vehicle with the linearized suspension elements and a possible sensor conguration. A half rather than full vehicle model is used because the dynamic coupling between the two bogies via the soft secondary suspension is small. The wheelsets and bogie each have two degrees-of-freedom (lateral and yaw), and for a half-vehicle model the vehicle body just has the lateral degree-offreedom. 2.2. Dynamic modelling The equations describing the plan view dynamic behaviour of the railway vehicle are developed from the
ybd

Csay

Ksy a d Ksyaw yb

Anti-yawdamper Ky Kx v w1 A1 Kray

Abd y1w Gyro G b b Ab yw2 w2 A2 b lbw

wheelset

Accelerometer Bogie frame c e Ksarb

Lateral damper Vehicle body

Ksry ysr Csy

Fig. 1. Plan view of half body Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle and sensor conguration.

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application of Newtons laws of motion to the individual masses and wheelsets, and the overall equations of motion for the half body vehicle shown in Fig. 1 travelling on straight track can be derived as follows: w1 m w1 y 2f _ K y K ray yw1 2f 22 Cw1 22 y v w1 K ray a d Cw1 K y K ray yb aK y dK ray Cb , 2f 11 l 2 _ Cw1 K x b2 Cw1 v K ray a d 2 Cw1 K ray a d yb 2f ll K x b2 Cb K ray a d d Cb 11 d 1 , r0

_ sr K sry yb K sry cCb C sy y _ bd K sry ysr , C sy y _1 y _ w1 y _ t1 , d _2 y _ w2 y _ t2 , d (1)

w1 K ray a d yw1 I w1 C

w2 m w2 y

2f 22 _ K y K ray yw2 2f 22 Cw2 y v w2 K ray a d Cw2 K y K ray yb aK y dK ray Cb ,

where yw1 and yw2 are the lateral displacements of the leading and trailing wheelsets, respectively, yb and ybd are the lateral displacements of the bogie and vehicle body, respectively, Cw1 and Cw2 are the yaw angles of the leading and trailing wheelsets, and Cb is the yaw angle of the bogie. yt1 and yt2 are the lateral track displacement inputs (track irregularity) at the leading and trailing wheels, respectively, which represent the deviation of the track from its intended alignment. The symbols and nominal parameter values in the equations are given in the Appendix. Linearized values are used for the stiffnesses, damping ratios and creep coefcients. To develop the model-based lter for estimation, a state-space form of the plan view vehicle dynamical model can be derived from (1) as: _ Ax Gb, x where (2)

_ w1 x y _ t1 b y and  0 G 0 _ w2 w2 K ray a d yw2 2f 11 l C I w2 C v K x b2 Cw2 K ray a d 2 Cw2

2

_ w 1 C w1 y _ w2 C w2 y _ b Cb y _ w2 y w2 C _ b yb C _ bd ybd ysr d 1 d 2 T , y w1 C T _ t2 y 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 T .

K ray a d yb K x b2 Cb K ray a d d Cb 2f ll 11 d 2 , r0 b K y K ray yw1 K ray a d Cw1 mb y K y K ray yw2 K ray a d Cw2 2K y K ray yb K sarb yb K sy yb K sry yb eK sarb cK sry Cb K sy K sarb ybd K sry ysr , b aK y dK ray yw1 K x b2 Cw1 I bC K ray a d d Cw1 aK y dK ray yw2 K x b2 Cw2 K ray a d d Cw2 _b eK sarb cK sry yb C say l 2 C
bw

2K x b2 Cb 2K y a2 K ray d 2 Cb K sry c2 K sarb e2 Cb K syaw Cb K sarb eybd K sry cysr , bd K sy K sry ksarb yb cK sry eK sarb Cb mbd y K sy K sarb ybd K sry ysr ,

Matrix A can readily be derived from (1), b is the lateral track velocity due to track lateral irregularities and can be approximated as zero mean white Gaussian noise (see e.g. Li, 2001) with variance Qb 4p2 Ar v2 , where Ar is the track roughness factor and v is the vehicle forward velocity, it can be considered as a random input exciting the vehicle dynamic system (2). Based on the derived plan view vehicle dynamic model, an eigenvalue analysis is performed so as to determine the undamped natural frequencies of the vehicle dynamic modes and the damping ratios associated with each mode; the results are shown in the Table 1. It can be seen that the main dynamic modes for the wheelset and bogie are less than 40 Hz and there is also a body mode below 1 Hz. These information will be useful for the selection of the sensors to be used in the test and the pre-processing of the measurement data from real test. Note that the results in Table 1 are obtained with the linearized nominal parameter values given in the Appendix and the vehicle forward velocity v 42:5 m=s (the design speed for the vehicle). For simulation studies, it is assumed that the vehicle is equipped with ve sensors (i.e. a gyro and four accelerometers) as shown in Fig. 1 which can measure the lateral w1 and y w2 ), the lateral accelerations of the two wheelsets (y _ b ) and b and C acceleration and yaw velocity of the bogie (y bd . As these the lateral acceleration of the vehicle body y

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46 Table 1 Plan view model eigenvalue analysis Frequency (Hz) 437.40 37.25 35.99 23.75 36.28 26.76 18.12 1.23 0.80 Damping ratio 1.0000 0.5677 0.5452 0.2595 0.9990 1.0000 1.0000 0.3157 0.1725 P. Li et al. / Control Engineering Practice 15 (2007) 4355

_ b or the linear measurements are either a state variable C w1 , y w2 , y b and y bd ), combinations of the state variables (y the measurement equation is given as follows: y Hx v,
T

(3)

_b y w1 y w2 y b C bd , v represents the measurewhere y y ment noise vector and the measurement matrix H is readily obtained from the system matrix A. 3. Parameter estimation strategy Failure modes, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) has been used in the early stage of this project as a tool to identify and prioritize faults. The results have shown that (see e.g. Goodman et al., 2005; Weston et al., 2003) the majority of the vehicle faults are wheel prole and suspension-related problems (such as dampers or airbag failure during service, worn wheels, etc). As such, our attention will focus on monitoring the parameter changes related to wheel prole and dampers; in particular, we are interested in estimating the damping coefcients C sy (secondary lateral damper), C say (secondary anti-yaw damper) and equivalent conicity l of the wheelset in the vehicle dynamic model (2) because those have been identied as being indicative of common faults in railway vehicles. As can be seen from the last section, the dynamic behaviour of a railway vehicle is very complex with strong cross-couplings both between individual masses and wheelsets and between different degrees of freedom, it is described by a high-dimensional state-space model. Direct estimation of the specic parameters in such a system is not straightforward. The solution to the problem involves the combined parameter and state estimation which was usually posed as a non-linear ltering problem by augmenting the state vector with the unknown parameters (see e.g. Ljung & So derstro m, 1983). Conventionally, the parameter estimation in such a system is performed with the extended Kalman lter (EKF) based approach. However, our early research (see Li, Goodall, & Kadirkamanathan, 2003, 2004) has shown that both the EKFbased and the more recent unscented Kalman lter (UKF)based (see e.g. Julier, Uhlmann, & Durrant-Whyte, 2000; Julier & Uhlmann, 2004) approaches are inadequate for the

problem considered. As such, a newly developed RBPFbased parameter estimation method (Li et al., 2003, 2004, see also Scho n & Gustafsson, 2003; Scho n, Gustafsson, & Nordlund, 2005) is adopted in this paper. The particle lter (also known as sequential Monte Carlo lter) (see e.g. Bolviken, Acklam, Christophersen, & Stordal, 2001; Doucet, Godsill, & Ardrieu, 2000; Gordon, Salmond, & Smith, 1993; Kitagawa, 1996) is a simulationbased method for general non-linear non-Gaussian state estimation which attempts to approximate the complete probability density function (pdf) of the state to be estimated. This is in contrast to just estimating the rst few central moments, as done for the EKF and UKF. The major innovation of the particle lter is to approximate the required, usually complicated, pdf by a swarm of interacting points called particles which can be considered as the realizations or samples from the required pdf, rather than by a function over the state space. As such, the method is not subject to any linearity and Gaussianity constraints on the model. The particle lter will propagate and update these particles as the measurement becomes available and as the number of particle increases, they effectively provide a good approximation to the required pdf. See Doucet, Freitas, and Gordon (2001) and Arulampalam, Maskell, Gordon, and Clapp (2002) for a summary of the state of the art of the particle ltering algorithms. The use of a particle lter for simultaneously estimating the states and parameters in general non-linear nonGaussian state-space model has been investigated by a number of authors (see e.g. Kitagawa, 1998; Liu & West, 2001). The idea is similar to that described in Ljung and So derstro m (1983), that is to augment the state vector with unknown parameters, and then design a particle lter based on the augmented state space model to perform estimation. A major drawback of such a direct use of a particle lter for parameter estimation is that the large augmented state dimension might be prohibitive for its use in practice. However, when parameter estimation is restricted to linear and Gaussian systems, an efcient algorithm can be derived using the so-called RaoBlackwellization/or marginalization technique (see e.g. Doucet et al., 2000, 2001) which will briey be explained next. 3.1. Problem formulation To facilitate presentation, the vehicle dynamic model (2) and (3) is rewritten as follows to include the parameters to be estimated explicitly: _ Ahx Gb, x y Hhx v,
T

(4) (5)

where h C sy C say l collects the parameters to be monitored which will determine the matrices A and H in the above continuous-time vehicle dynamic model. For practical implementation, the measurements are usually sampled data (i.e. discrete) and a discrete version of

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the above model is given as follows (see e.g. Maybeck, 1982): xk1 Uhk xk Chk wk , yk Hhk xk vk ,
Ahk T

However, the MMSE of nk can be rewritten as ^ n k Z nk pnk jZk dnk  Z Z xk ; hk pxk jhk ; Zk dxk phk jZk dhk .

(6) (7) RT
A h k t

12

, Chk 0 e G dt and wk , vk are where Uhk e white Gaussian noises of appropriate strength, T is the sampling period for measurements. It is obvious that, when (4) is translated into the discrete form (6), the unknown physical parameters (C sy , C say and l) will affect many of the elements in matrices U and C of the resulting discrete state-space vehicle dynamic model. The problem is then to estimate hk in (6) and (7) from measurements yk k 1; 2; . . . ; N . 3.2. RBPF-based parameter estimation To estimate hk in (6) and (7) using the RBPF-based method, the model is reformulated as follows: hk1 phk1 jhk , xk1 Uhk xk Chk wk , yk Hhk xk vk , (8) (9) (10)

where pjhk denotes the pdf given hk . Let Zk denote the set of measurements up to time k, i.e. Zk fy1 ; y2 ; . . . ; yk g; the Bayesian approach to estimate the parameters in the augmented system (8)(10) would be to construct the posterior pdf pnk jZk of the augmented T T state nk xT k ; hk , and then determine the unknown parameters hk by estimating the augmented states nk with pnk jZk . This results in a non-liner ltering problem which can be solved by a standard particle lter (see e.g. Gordon et al., 1993; Kitagawa, 1996) based on the augmented model (8)(10). In this case, one has to sample the augmented state vector n and a standard particle lter will recursively generate a sample-based approximation to the augmented posterior pdf pnk jZk . The minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimate of nk is then calculated using the augmented state samples nkjk1 i, i 1; 2; . . . ; m from the standard particle lter as follows: Z m X ^ ak inkjk1 i, nk Enk jZk nk pnk jZk dnk
i1

In present case, for each given parameter sample, pxk jhk ; Zk is Gaussian and the integral in the brackets in (12) can be computed analytically (i.e. the state vector xk can be marginalized out conditional upon a realization of hk ). This is because, for each realization (or sample) of hk , we have a single linear Gaussian state space model as shown in (9) and (10). As such, the required marginalization or RaoBlackwellization can be carried out exactly using the Kalman lter algorithm. The resulting so-called RBPF is similar to the standard particle lter, but only the parameter space with dimension dimh 3 needs to be sampled, rather than the augmented state space with dimension dimn 20, thus the size of the space to be sampled is drastically reduced. With the RBPF, the pdf pxk jhk ; Zk in (12) is given by the Kalman lter, while phk jZk in (12) is approximated by the particle lter. This will result in each parameter particle being associated with one Kalman lter recursion; it can be thought as using a particle lter for the non-linear portion of the problem introduced by augmenting unknown parameters with the state vector, and the Kalman lter for the remainder. Thus the method makes full use of the analytically tractable substructure in the augmented system (8)(10). The details of the algorithm can be found in Li et al. (2004). 4. Results The performance of parameter estimation of railway vehicle dynamic model using the RBPF-based method described in the last section with different sensor congurations is assessed in this section through simulation. The inuence of the uncertainty in the random track inputs (i.e. the uncertain track roughness level) on parameter estimates is also studied. The results from simulation studies are then veried using real measurement data from a Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle test. 4.1. Practical implementation issues In comparison with the classical EKF-based method and maximum likelihood (ML) method for estimation of the parameters in a state space model, the RBPF-based method described above is easier to implement in practice as no analytical derivatives (for example, the Jacobians in the EKF-based method) need to be calculated. This is particularly helpful in the case where the analytical dependency of the discrete state-space matrices on the parameter h is very complex or even unavailable, for example, when the discrete version of a continuous time

(11) where m is the number of particles (samples) used in particle lter and ak i is the probability weight associated with the ith particle. In the present application, dimxk 17 and dimh 3, so the total dimension of the augmented state vector is thus dimnk 20, which is very difcult for a particle lter to handle since a huge number of particles would be required.

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state-space model is used to estimate the parameters in continuous-time model, as in the railway application described in this paper. Another appealing advantage of the RBPF-based method for parameter estimation is that no prior knowledge on the particular initial values for the parameters to be estimated is required, whereas the reasonable initial values are usually required for EKFbased method and ML method to ensure the convergency of the estimation or avoid the local minima. To nd the global solution with these classical methods, there is usually no other way than to start the iterative minimization routine at different feasible initial values and compare the results, thus substantial interactions from the user are required. In all the following studies, the number of particles used in the RBPF is chosen as m 1000, these parameter particles are initialized with the uniform distributions over the whole possible range of parameter values (in the simulation studies described in this paper, the following ranges are used: 0:3C sy0 2:5C sy0 for C sy , 0:3C say0 2:5C say0 for C say and 0:3l0 3:5l0 for l, where C sy0 , C say0 and l0 are the true (nominal) values used to generate data) and then evolved using method of kernel smoothing with shrinkage suggested by Liu and West (2001) during particle ltering, in which the evolution of parameter particles is carried out as follows (see Li et al., 2004): k wy , hk1 ahk 1 ah k (13)

4.2. Performance assessment by simulation experiments The measurement data are generated using the discretized vehicle dynamic model (6) and (7) with parameters C sy 20 kNs=m, C say 3000 kNs=m, l 0:15 and covariance Qw , Qv of wk , vk being:
" Qw 2 4p2 Ar v2 T 0 104 0 104 0 0 0 0 4p2 Ar v2 T 0 0 4:11 104 0 0 # , 0 0 0 3:75 10 0
7

6 6 0 6 6 Qv 6 6 0 6 6 0 4 0

0 0 0 0 7:62 103

3 7 7 7 7 7, 7 7 7 5

where a 3d 1=2d, d is a discount factor in 0; 1 k is which is chosen as d 0:99 in the following studies, h the Monte Carlo mean of the parameters at time instant k 2 and wy k N0; h Vk is the roughening noise with 2 2 h 1 a , Vk being the variance matrix of the parameters at time instant k, then the pdf used in (8) is of the following form: k ; h2 V k . phk1 jhk Nahk 1 ah (14)

Ideally, if the number of particles used for particle ltering tends to innite, the variance of the roughening noise in Eq. (13) for parameter evolution should decay with time and eventually become close to zero for estimation of the xed parameters as shown in (14). However, the number of particles used in RBPF will be limited in practice due to the available computational power. For this reason, a lower bound to the variance of the roughening noise will need to be set so as to enable the parameter particles to explore a small neighbourhood and avoid premature of the algorithm caused by the limited number of the particles used. This lower bound may also enable the algorithm to track the slow drifting in the parameters to be estimated as indicated in Li et al. (2004). In the following studies, the lower bound of the standard deviation of the roughening noise is set to 0:1% of the corresponding nominal parameter value.

where T 1 ms is the sampling period for measurement. Track roughness factor Ar 2 0:33 103 and vehicle forward velocity v 42:5 m=s are being used for data generation. Five sensors are used initially as shown in Fig. 1, i.e. the w1 ), leading wheelsets accelerometer A1 (for measuring y the trailing wheelsets accelerometer A2 (for measuring w2 ), the bogie lateral accelerometer Ab (for measuring y b ), y _ b ) and the vehicle the bogie yaw gyro Gb (for measuring C bd ). The body lateral accelerometer Abd (for measuring y results of parameter estimation with RBPF-based method are shown in Figs. 2(A)(C), from which it can been seen that the parameter estimates converge to the neighbourhood of the true values. To show the condence in the ^ and results, the ratios between the standard deviations s the absolute values of the corresponding parameter ^ j) are plotted in Fig. 2(D). It can be ^ y =j y estimates (i.e. s seen that, after 3 s (i.e. 3000 iterations as the data are sampled at 1 kHz), the estimates have stabilized and all their standard deviations are less than 2% of the estimated values. In practice, however, inertial sensors mounted on the wheelsets are extremely undesirable due to the severe vibration environment and the consequent expense required to provide sensors that have sufcient accuracy and reliability in this environment. Thus, the two wheelset accelerometers (i.e. A1 and A2 ) are taken away and Figs. 3(A)(C) show the results of parameter estimation using only bogie and body mounted sensors (i.e. Ab , Gb and Abd ). It can be seen that, with only three bogie and body mounted sensors, the parameter estimation is still well-performed although a small bias in the estimate of anti-yaw damper C say can be seen and a slightly higher uncertainty in the estimates as shown in Fig. 3(D) in comparison with Fig. 2(D). Note that the above results are obtained assuming exact knowledge on the statistics of the random track inputs, i.e. the track roughness factor Ar 2 0:33 103 (which is the exact value used to generate measurement data) is being used for calculating the value of Qw for the

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5 4 Csy(Ns/m) 3 2 1

x 104 estimate true value Csay(Ns/m) 6

x 106 estimate true value

2 0 1 2 3 4 5 (B) 0.06 0 1 2 3 4 5

(A) 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 (C) 1

time (sec) estimate true value

time (sec) sy/Csy /

/ 2 3 4 5 (D)

0.04

0.02

time (sec)

time (sec)

Fig. 2. Results of parameter estimation using ve sensors: (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

5 4 Csy(Ns/m) 3 2 1

x 104 estimate true value Csay(Ns/m) 6

x 106 estimate true value

2 0 1 2 3 4 5 (B) 0.25 0.2 / 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 1 2 3 4 5 (D) 0 0 say/Csay 1 2 3 4 5 / 0 1 2 3 4 5

(A) 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1

time (sec) estimate true value

time (sec)

sy/Csy

(C)

time (sec)

time (sec)

Fig. 3. Results of parameter estimation using bogie and body mounted sensors only: (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

RBPF. In a practical application, the track inputs (in present case, the track roughness Ar or Qw ) may not be known exactly. To check the robustness of the RBPFbased method with respect to the uncertainty in the statistics of the random track inputs, the parameter

estimation is performed using the same set of simulation data but assuming the different track roughness levels, the results are shown in Fig. 4 (assuming a smaller Ar for calculating Qw ) and Fig. 5 (assuming a larger Ar for calculating Qw ).

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5 4 Csy(Ns/m) 3 2 1

x 104 estimate true value Csay(Ns/m) 6

x 106 estimate true value

2 0 1 2 3 4 5 (B) 0.2 0.15 / 0.1 0.05 / 0 1 2 3 4 5

(A) 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 (C) 1

time (sec) estimate true value

time (sec)

sy/Csy say/Csay

5 (D)

time (sec)

time (sec)

Fig. 4. Results of parameter estimation using bogie and body mounted sensors only and assuming a smaller Ar 0:33 103 : (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

5 4 Csy(Ns/m) 3 2 1 0 (A)

x 104 estimate true value Csay(Ns/m)

x 106 estimate true value

2 1 2 3 time (sec) 4 5 (B) 0 1 2 3 time (sec) 4 5

0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 (C) 1

estimate true value /

0.3

sy/Csy /

0.2

0.1

say/Csay

2 3 time (sec)

5 (D)

2 3 time (sec)

Fig. 5. Results of parameter estimation using bogie and body mounted sensors only and assuming a larger Ar 4 0:33 103 : (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

As can be seen from these gures, the estimates of the two damping coefcients C sy and C say are essentially unchanged with different assumptions on the values of Ar / or Qw , but the bias in the estimate of l is signicant. This is

basically because the strength of the actual random track excitation to the railway vehicle dynamic system is proportional to both the track roughness Ar and conicity l as can be seen from the linearized vehicle dynamic model (1).

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damper force (kN)

The higher the track roughness Ar and conicity l, the stronger the excitation to the system. As such, for a given set of measurement data (which implies a given level of random excitation), assuming a smaller track roughness Ar will result in a higher estimated value of conicity l as shown in Fig. 4(C), whereas assuming a larger track roughness Ar will result in a lower estimated value of conicity l as shown in Fig. 5(C). Therefore, to obtain the correct estimate of the conicity l, the exact knowledge on the statistics of the random track inputs is required. 4.3. Results from Coradia Class 175 vehicle test As part of the development of the model-based technique for railway vehicle condition monitoring, the method and the observations from simulation studies described above are veried using the real test data gathered from a Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle provided by Alstom Transport Services. A simplied description of the vehicle used has been given in Fig. 1. The model data were presented in the form of a comprehensive Vampires data le from AEA Technology Rail. The parameters related to the linearized model used in this paper are extracted from the data le and listed in the Appendix. The nominal properties of two dampers C sy and C say are originally portrayed by the arrays of velocity vs force given in the Vampires data le which has been extracted and depicted in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. It can be seen that, when operating within a small velocity range (0:1 m=s for C sy , 0:0035 m=s for C say ), the two dampers are essentially linear elements although the overall characteristics are certainly non-linear and exhibit some kinds of saturation properties. The purpose of the test was to see what could be achieved with a minimal set of sensors. Practically it was

secondary antiyaw damper property 8 6 4 2 0 2 4 6 8 0 0.005 0.02 0.015 0.01 0.005 velocity (m/s) 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.5Csay=2057kNs/m

Fig. 7. Characteristic of secondary anti-yaw damper C say .

secondary lateral damper property 8 6 4 damper force (kN) 2 0 2 4 6 8 0.5 0 velocity (m/s)
Fig. 6. Characteristic of secondary lateral damper C sy .

Csy=40kNs/m

0.5

agreed that this should comprise a single box tted to the bogie containing a yaw gyro Gb and lateral accelerometer Ab , plus a lateral body accelerometer (i.e. Abd ). (The box also contained a pitch gyro in the test, but this was used in connection with identifying track characteristics and features.) The test was carried out over one day between Chester and Llandudno in North Wales. An automated data collection system was built and the Matlab Data Acquisition Toolbox was used for data acquisition at a sampling rate of 4 kHz (4 kHz is chosen as the requirement for identifying track characteristics and features using same test data). The pre-processing of the measurement data involves the conversion of the raw data (in voltage) to SI units, smoothing and down-sampling to 1 kHz (i.e. averaging over every four successive samples) and low pass ltering data as the main bogie and body modes are less than 40 Hz from the eigenvalue analysis performed in Section 2.2. A number of different 5 s sections of data acquired when vehicle travelling on the straight track with speed around 42 m/s were selected for parameter estimation and the consistent parameter estimates have been produced. Fig. 8 shows one set of the results which were obtained with the track roughness factor chosen as Ar 4 0:33 103 for the calculation of Qw used in RBPF. Note also that the measurement data from body lateral accelerometer Abd and bogie yaw gyro Gb are ltered by a third order standard Butterworth low pass lter with a cut-off frequency f c 10 Hz, and the data from bogie lateral accelerometer Ab are ltered by the same type of low pass lter but with a cut-off frequency f c 40 Hz. It can be seen that all the parameter estimates are convergent. The estimates after 5 s (i.e 5000 iterations) are ^ sy 42:2 kNs=m, C ^ say 3471:9 kNs=m and as follows: C ^ 0:2764. In addition to the parameter estimates, the l

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52 P. Li et al. / Control Engineering Practice 15 (2007) 4355

7 6 Csy (Ns/m) 5 4 3 2

x 104 estimate Csay (Ns/m) linearized value 10 8 6 4 2 651 652 653 654 655 (B) 0.2 0.15 / 0.1 0.05

x 106 estimate linearized value

1 650 (A) 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 650 (C)

650

651

652

653

654

655

time (sec) estimate linearized value

time (sec)

sy/Csy / say/Csay

651

652 653 time (sec)

654

655 (D)

0 650

651

652

653

654

655

time (sec)

Fig. 8. Results of parameter estimation using data from real test with assumption Ar 4 0:33 103 : (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

lateral damper Csy velocity 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 Vsay (m/s) Vsy (m/s) 0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 650 651 652 653 654 655 0.005 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 650 0.01 0.015

antiyaw damper Csay velocity

651

time (sec)
Fig. 9. Estimation of lateral damper operating velocity V sy with assumption Ar 4 0:33 103 .

652 653 time (sec)

654

655

Fig. 10. Estimation of anti-yaw damper operating velocity V say with assumption Ar 4 0:33 103 .

RBPF-based method can also yield the state estimates which can be used to determine the operating velocities V sy and V say of two dampers. For the secondary lateral damper C sy , the operating velocity V sy is calculated approximately by K sry ^by ^ sy y ^ ^ _ sr y _ bd ^ cC ^ sr , V y ^ sy b C whereas, for the secondary anti-yaw damper, the operating ^ ^ _ b , where y _ b, C ^b ^ say l bw C ^b, C velocity V say is obtained by V ^ sy is from ^ sr are from state estimation, and C and y

parameter estimation. The estimated operating velocities of two dampers are plotted in Figs. 9 and 10, respectively. It can be seen that the lateral damper C sy operates well within the central high damping zone (i.e. ^ sy o0:1 m=s), whereas the anti-yaw damper 0:1 m=soV operates somewhat out of this central zone (i.e. ^ say j40:0035 m=s). This is probably the reason that the jV estimate of C sy is somewhat greater than its linearized nominal value as shown in Fig. 8(A), and the estimate of C say is somewhat less than its linearized nominal value as shown in Fig. 8(B).

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P. Li et al. / Control Engineering Practice 15 (2007) 4355 53

7 6 Csy (Ns/m) 5 4 3 2

x 104 estimate linearized value Csay (Ns/m) 10 8 6 4 2 651 652 653 654 655 (B)

x 106 estimate linearized value

1 650 (A) 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 650 (C)

650

651

652

653

654

655

time (sec) estimate linearized value

time (sec)

0.15 0.1 0.05 0 650 (D)

sy/Csy / say/Csay

651

652 653 time (sec)

654

655

651

652

653

654

655

time (sec)

Fig. 11. Results of parameter estimation using data from real test with assumption Ar 6 0:33 103 : (A) estimate of C sy ; (B) estimate of C say ; (C) estimate of l; (D) ratios of standard deviations over parameter estimates.

lateral damper Csy velocity 0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 Vsay (m/s) Vsy (m/s) 0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 650 651 652 653 654 655 0.01 0.005 0 0.005 0.01 0.015 650 0.015

antiyaw damper Csay velocity

651

652

653

654

655

time (sec)
Fig. 12. Estimation of lateral damper operating velocity V sy with assumption Ar 6 0:33 103 .

time (sec)
Fig. 13. Estimation of anti-yaw damper operating velocity V say with assumption Ar 6 0:33 103 .

To check how the choice on the value of Ar will affect the parameter estimates, the parameter estimation was performed using the same set of test data but with a 50% increase in the value of Ar (i.e. Ar 6 0:33 103 ), the results are shown in Fig. 11. The parameter estimates after ^ sy 45:4 kNs=m, 5 s (i.e 5000 iterations) are as follows: C ^ 0:2347. To facilitate the ^ say 3450:7 kNs=m and l C comparison, the estimated two damper operating velocities ^ sy and V ^ say are also plotted in Figs. 12 and 13, V respectively.

It is shown that the change in the estimate of C say between Figs. 8(B) and 11(B) is negligible; the change in the estimate of C sy between Figs. 8(A) and 11(A) can be seen but is not signicant. The estimates of the two damper operating velocities are essentially the same as can be seen from Figs. 9, 10, 12, and 13, however, the decrease in the estimated value of l is noticeable as shown between Figs. 8(C) and 11(C). These are in the agreement with the results obtained from previous simulation studies.

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5. Conclusions The problem of parameter estimation in a railway vehicle dynamic model for condition monitoring is studied in this paper. A newly developed RBPF-based method is used for parameter estimation. The performance of parameter estimation with different sensor congurations is assessed and compared through simulations and the results are very promising. Two added advantages of using the RBPF-based method are that no analytical derivatives (such as Jacobians) need to be calculated and no prior knowledge on the particular initial values for the parameters to be estimated is required as for classical EKFbased and ML methods. The method and the observations from simulation studies are veried using real test data and the consistent results have been obtained. The uncertainty in the estimates of wheelset equivalent conicity l comes mainly from two sources: the rst is the uncertain size of the random track inputs (i.e. the track roughness) as indicated in the simulations, and the second, which might be proved to be more important, is the actual non-linear proled wheel. It is possible that explicit non-linear estimation is to be preferred; indeed this is perhaps what is really needed, i.e. an estimation of wheelrail prole rather than the equivalent (linearized) conicity. The whole issue is a serious research challenge which deserves further research. Another issue which needs further research is the robustness with respect to the uncertainty in the parameters, such as creep coefcients f 11 , f 22 and some parasitic stiffness used in the model. Nevertheless, it was very gratifying that, notwithstanding the non-linear effects, sensible parameter estimates have been produced even when no wheelset sensors are used, and this can provide the basis for a practical vehicle condition monitoring system. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Alstom Transport Services for the arrangement of test facilities and the collaboration on the project from AEA Technology Rail and Nexus. Funding support from the UK Department of Transport (DfT) under the Future Integrated Transport Programme (FIT096) is also gratefully acknowledged.

K ray Kx K sy K sry K sarb K syaw C sy C say f 11 f 22 a b c d e l l bw l v r0

primary radial arm bush lateral stiffness per wheelset 2 11 500 kN=m primary longitudinal stiffness per wheelset 2 554 23 000 kN=m secondary airbag+traction centre parasitic lateral stiffness per bogie 2 88:927 197 kN=m secondary lateral damper series stiffness per bogie 10 000 kN=m secondary anti-roll bar parasitic lateral stiffness per bogie 83 kN=m secondary anti-roll bar + traction centre parasitic yaw stiffness per bogie (10 kNm/rad) secondary lateral damping per bogie (40 kNs/m) secondary anti-yaw damping per bogie 2 2057 kNs=m longitudinal creep coefcient (10 MN) lateral creep coefcient (8.8 MN) semi wheel-wheel spacing (1.25 m) lateral semi-spacing of radial arm bushes (1.02 m) longitudinal offset of lateral damper from bogie center (0.47 m) longitudinal semi-spacing of radial arm bushes (0.80 m) anti-roll bar longitudinal offset from bogie center (0.26 m) half gauge (0.75 m) lateral position of bogie end of anti-yaw damper from bogie center (1.20 m) conicity (0.15) vehicle forward velocity wheelset radius (0.42 m)

References
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Appendix. Symbols and parameter values for Coradia Class 175 railway vehicle mw Iw mb Ib mbd Ky wheelset mass (1530 kg) wheelset yaw inertia 1017 kgm2 bogie mass (2698 kg) bogie yaw inertia 2138 kgm2 half vehicle body mass 0:5 37637 kg primary spring lateral stiffness per wheelset 2 554 kN=m

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