Pareto optimisation of railway bogie suspension damping to enhance safety and comfort

This paper presents the optimisation of damping characteristics in bogie suspensions using a multi-objective optimisation methodology. The damping is investigated and optimised in terms of the resulting performances of a railway vehicle with respect to safety, comfort and wear considerations. Acomplete multi-body system model describing the railway vehicle dynamics is implemented in commercial software Gensys and used in the optimisation. In complementary optimisation analyses, a reduced and linearised model describing the bogie system dynamics is also utilised. Pareto fronts with respect to safety, comfort and wear objectives are obtained, showing the trade-off behaviour between the objectives. Such trade-off curves are of importance, especially in the design of damping functional components. The results demonstrate that the developed methodology can successfully be used for multi-objective investigations of a railway vehicle within models of different levels of complexity. By introducing optimised passive damping elements in the bogie suspensions, both safety and comfort are improved. In particular, it is noted that the use of optimised passive damping elements can allow for higher train speeds. Finally, adaptive strategies for switching damping parameters with respect to different ride conditions are outlined and discussed.