High speed presentation wins award!
Best Presentation Prize won by Control Systems PhD Student
Could you explain a PhD thesis in four minutes? Not an entire thesis naturally, but a clear enough overview of the background and motivation, research methodology, current status and the projection of the work in the future to impress a panel of expert judges and earn yourself a prize. We are proud to announce that Alejandra Matamoros-Sanchez has done just that at a PhD Student Presentation Event in London on 10 March 2011.
Alejandra, a Venezuelan PhD student and a member of our Control Systems Research group, is investigating the use of a mechanical device called an 'inerter' for enhancing the performance of active suspensions in railway vehicles. During the short presentation she explained the main idea and motivation of this important research for the field of control applications for railway vehicle dynamics.
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Inerters were first conceived in 1997 by Professor Malcolm Smith of Cambridge University’s Control Group and used for the first time by McLaren in 2005. They are already part of passive suspension systems in motorbikes and cars, including Formula One. However, trains currently use conventional passive systems, although there is some interest in the use of actively controlled suspensions. |
Alejandra’s research is exploring whether inerters could be successfully combined with active suspension systems in trains - a novel combination never before explored in the control literature and railway dynamics. The core of her research is to establish whether the inerter could further improve the performance of active suspension systems.
Will the new combination work? Will the benefits of each component and subsystem be retained? Might additional benefits emerge because of the novel approach?
“I think we are heading in the right direction to demonstrate that the inerter does improve this engineering application”, says Alejandra. “I am interested now in the main questions, i.e. ‘how’, ‘in what way’ and ‘by how much’?
Alejandra is collecting data on the performance and behaviour changes of this novel passive-active combination through modelling and simulation tools. She is particularly interested in assessing ride quality and preserving dynamic stability. Could the inerter enhance the dynamic achievable in active solutions by relaxing the system’s trade-offs? Could advanced control strategies be created by exploiting the inerter’s dynamic features? If the answers come back positive – and initial results are encouraging , the combination could become a future railway suspension technology.
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To make her presentation a little more ‘interesting’ for her, one of the expert panel judges was Prof Malcolm Smith himself - the inerter’s inventor. “That was a real challenge!” commented Alejandra. “Afterwards he gave a lecture on the inerter which was a double bonus.” Left: Professor Malcolm Smith presents Ale with her award |
Alejandra, is supervised by Professor Roger Goodall and Dr. Argyrios Zolotas, who both have long experience in researching control applications for railway vehicles.