Impact of track irregularities on high-speed maglev trains and AMESO-based improved levitation control strategy

Track irregularities act as a type of major external disturbances during operation of high-speed maglev trains, easily triggering vehicle vibration and levitation gap fluctuation, thus threatening operational stability and ride comfort. This paper investigates the dynamic interaction mechanism between track irregularities and maglev trains from the perspective of disturbance input and system output, and proposes an improved levitation control strategy to suppress the gap fluctuation caused by track irregularities. Frequency-domain analysis reveals the low-pass filtering characteristic of the levitation system, where gap fluctuation is greatly influenced by running speed and track excitation frequency, requiring the levitation system to follow low-frequency excitations and reject high-frequency ones. The adaptive model assisted extended state observer (AMESO)-based levitation control is designed to reduce gap tracking error via adaptive excitation frequency identification and accurate feedforward compensation. Stability analysis via Lyapunov theory proves the uniformly ultimately boundedness of the closed-loop system. Simulation and experimental results both demonstrate that the AMESO-based levitation controller significantly reduces gap fluctuation and acceleration amplitude, offering an advanced and practical solution for high-speed maglev control systems.