A predictive control method to improve pressure tracking precision and reduce valve switching for pneumatic brake systems.

Pneumatic brake systems are crucial for the operation of trains. However, due to switching characteristics of on/off solenoid valves, the precise pressure control and low switching activities of valves are difficult to guarantee simultaneously during braking. To address the issue, a hybrid model predictive control (MPC) method is proposed for implementing the multi‐objective optimisation in this paper, i.e. the precise pressure tracking and the valve switching reduction. In order to model the hybrid behaviour caused by continuous dynamics of the pressure and discrete features of solenoid valves, the mixed logic dynamical system theory is applied. Then, the braking control problem is recast as a hybrid MPC problem, which jointly optimises the pressure tracking precision and the valve switching. A mixed integer linear program is formulated to solve the MPC problem in an efficient way. Both simulation and experiment results show that the accurate pressure control and low switching activities of valves can be achieved by the proposed method when compared with existing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]