Abstract: A semi-active control of high-speed train suspension system with magnetorheological (MR) damper is presented. At first a MR damper working in flow mode is designed. Performance testing is done for this damper with INSTRON machine. Then a mathematical model, modified Bouc-Wen model, is adopted to characterize the performance of the MR damper, with optimization method and experimental results of MR damper, the coefficients of the model are determined. A scaled half train model is set up including the model of the MR damper and a semi-active control strategy is adopted to control the vibration of suspension system. By center manifold theorem, the stability of nonlinear systems with MR damper is studied. Simulation results show that with the semi-active control the vibration of suspension system is well controlled.

Key words: High-speed train, Centre manifold, Magnetorheological damper, Semi-active control, Suspension system