Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding-Mode Control of Wheel Slide Protection Device for ER24PC Locomotive

Abstract Wheel Slide Protection Devices (WSPD) are employed in railway vehicles to maximize the average of the possible frictional braking force, which is a nonlinear function of the slip ratio of the wheel sets. In this paper, to control the WSPD, a low-order model is presented and un-modeled dynamics are considered as uncertainties. Due to the nonlinear dynamics of the system and presence of uncertainties, Adaptive Fuzzy Sliding-Mode Control (AFSMC) is employed to regulate the slip ratio towards the desired value. The proposed controller employs a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) technique to generate the braking torque. The second Lyapunov theorem is used to prove the closed-loop asymptotic stability. In the simulations, the switching dynamics of WSPD is considered and the multi-body dynamics method is used for modeling the longitudinal dynamics of ER24PC locomotive. The obtained results reveal that by using the AFSMC method, the slip ratios of wheel sets converge to the reference values. Unlike the conventional method, in which the fluctuations of slip ratio diverge near the stopping time, simulation studies reveal that with the AFSMC method, the stopping time of the locomotive and the fluctuation amplitude of the slip ratios are reduced.