  Railway running gears with independently rotating wheels (IRW) can
significantly improve wear figures, comfort, and safety in railway
transportation, but certain measures for wheelset stabilization are required.
This is one reason why the application of traditional wheelsets is still common
practice in industry. Apart from lateral guidance, the longitudinal control is
of crucial importance for railway safety. In the current contribution, an
integrated controller for joined lateral and longitudinal control of a
high-speed railway running gear with driven IRW is designed. To this end, a
novel adhesion-based traction control law is combined with linear time-variant
and nonlinear model predictive control (MPC) schemes for lateral guidance. The
MPC schemes are able to use tabulated track geometry data and preview
information about set points to minimize the lateral displacement error.
Co-simulation results with a detailed multi-body simulation show the
effectiveness of the approach compared with state-of-the-art techniques in
various scenarios, including curving, varying velocities up to 400 km/h and
abruptly changing wheel-rail adhesion conditions.
