Locomotive Wheel Slip Controller based on Power Dissipation in Wheel-rail Contact

Abstract

Railway traction vehicles are equipped by slip controllers to avoid wheels slippage occurrence during the train operation and simultaneously enables to maximise the force transfer from wheels to rails. Many types of slip controllers were developed during the last decades, and their development is not sill finished. The paper proposes a novel slip controller principle that is based on a calculation of power dissipation in a wheel-rail contact area. The presented approach enables better adhesion utilisation than conventional slip controllers based on the adhesion coefficient value estimation. The dissipation power is calculated from the estimated adhesion force and train velocity. The estimation of the adhesion force is made by an extended Kalman filter. The slip controller principle is verified on measured data that were obtained on a freight train hauled by an electric locomotive.