Control of wheel motors for the provision of light rail traction and steering

This paper presents the development of a wheel motor control system for the provision of traction and active steering of railway vehicles. The new wheel motor concept and vehicle configurations are introduced and detailed control schemes are provided. The paper is mainly concerned with the development of a practical control strategy to achieve efficient and accurate delivery of tractive effort via the implementation of a field-orientated control approach for the permanent magnet motors, with a particular emphasis on the design methodology/method rather than design details. Results in all three stages of the development, i.e. modelling and simulation, in-house laboratory experiment, and on-site track full vehicle testing, are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control system.