Experimental study on dynamic load measurement of a tilting mechanism of a railway vehicle using two hydraulic cylinders

A tilting train is primarily designed to achieve increased speed in a curved section without causing discomfort to passengers. Ensuring the safety of the tilting control system is one of the most important factors in such a train. This paper presents the development of a hydraulic tilting system that can measure the force in real time to find the cause of overcurrent occurring often in an actuator of a Korean tilting train. To smoothly realize tilting motion of the Korean tiling train using hydraulic actuators, the developed hydraulic tilting mechanism was designed such that synchronization control of two hydraulic cylinders installed in opposite directions was possible; furthermore, a cooling system was developed to ensure a test environment with an appropriate temperature. The actual force acting on the two hydraulic cylinders was measured and analyzed for various tilting speed of the Korean tilting train. The experimental results show that the hydraulic tilting actuator system developed for the Korean tilting train is valid. Furthermore, it is shown that two actuator loads are detected successfully acting on the hydraulic tilting system.