Suspension Performance and Energy Harvesting Property Study of a Novel Railway Vehicle Bogie with the Hydraulic-Electromagnetic Energy-Regenerative Shock Absorber

Systematic research on dynamic model, simulation analyses, prototype production and bench tests have been carried out in recent years on the most popular energy-harvesting shock absorbers-the mechanical motion rectifier (MMR), and the hydraulic-electromagnetic energy-regenerative shock absorber (HESA). This paper presents a novel application of the HESA into bogie system of railway vehicles. In order to study the differences of suspension performance and energy harvesting property between first suspension system and second suspension system of the application, simulation models are built in AMESim to make comparison studies on the different department suspensions caused by the nonlinear damping behaviors of the HESA. The simulation results show that the system can effectively reduce the impact between wheel and rail tracks, while maintaining good potential to recycle vibratory energy. And the relationships as well as differences between the first suspensions and second suspensions have been concluded, which are useful for the design of HESA-Bogie. Moreover, comparing the discrepancy between the first suspension system and second suspension system, energy harvesting property of in the application of HESA-Bogie can be evaluated and then the best application department can be found, which proves the theoretical feasibilities of the HESA-Bogie of this structure to improve the fuel economy and reduce dust emission.