Distributed Model Predictive Control Based on Multi-agent Model for Electric Multiple Units

The distributed-power electric multiple units (EMUs) are widely used in high-speed railway. Due to the structural characteristic of mutual-coupled power units in EMUs, each power unit is set as an agent. Combining with the traction/brake characteristic curve and running data of EMUs, a subtractive clustering method and pattern classification algorithm are adopted to set up a multi-model set for every agent. Then, the multi-agent model is established according to the multi-agent network topology and mutual-coupled constraint relations. Finally, we adopt a smooth start switching control strategy and a multi-agent distributed coordination control algorithm to ensure the synchronous speed tracking control of each agent. Simulation results on the actual CRH380A running data show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.