A Method for Maintaining Virtually Coupled States of Train Convoys

Virtual coupling, which provides great advantages in operational flexibility and line capacity, is an advanced signaling concept for the railway industry. The dynamic disturbances caused by line conditions might change the coupled movements of the train convoy into abnormal states, which means the speed difference and separation distance of the adjacent trains exceed the given thresholds. This paper proposes a method to maintain the coupled states using terminal sliding mode control (SMC) based on second-order nonlinear train dynamics, with a nonlinear observer eliminating the estimation error due to time-varying measurement delay. The controller calculates the optimal unit effective tractive force for the following train in real-time, taking the leader velocity and desired separation as control targets. The simulation of a two-train convoy on a high-speed railway is conducted including different abnormal scenarios. The results demonstrate that the proposed method eliminates the observation errors and achieves synchronous convergence of the tracking errors while guaranteeing passenger comfort, and that it outperforms traditional SMC.