Models for Support and Guidance Systems

Abstract

The tasks of the vehicle support and guidance system are

• support the vehicle on the track and guiding the vehicle along the track,

• isolation of the vehicle body including passengers and goods from disturbances caused by track unevenness and external loads e. g. wind gusts.

The first task affects directly the driving safety, whereas the second task is related to the driving comfort. To ensure a high driving safety, the support and guidance system has to provide a firm connection to the track. This is in contradiction to the demand for a high driving comfort which requests small accelerations of the vehicle body and, therefore, requires a soft suspension. For most vehicles, the resulting conflict of these tasks is solved by dividing the support and guidance system into two subsystems: the primary suspension system consisting of the components in the immediate vicinity of the track and the secondary suspension system connecting the vehicle body and the primary suspension system. This results in the basic vehicle set up shown in Fig. 3.1. In general, the design of the primary and the secondary suspension system cannot be performed independently from each other.