不对称可变时滞下的列车虚拟编组稳定控制方法

Virtual coupling (VC) has demonstrated significant potential for enhancing railway transport capacity. However, its operational efficiency and safety are severely compromised by safety risks arising from unreliable communication environments. To address the latency sensitivity challenges in VC systems under unreliable communication environments, this paper proposes a distributed online optimal control framework to enhance both stability and safety guarantees for train platoons under time-varying delays. Specifically, a bidirectional communication topology-based platoon dynamics model is established to characterize the inter-train interaction dynamics under asymmetric time-varying delays. A model predictive control (MPC) framework is designed to achieve an effective balance between formation coordination and fuel economy, while accounting for safety constraints and the inherent characteristics of individual trains. Furthermore, string stability criteria are rigorously derived and integrated as real-time constraints to ensure inter-train stability. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed control method can address the impacts effectively caused by system-varying delays, shorten the time required for VC formation, reduce the maximum fluctuation amplitude, and outperforms traditional methods in efficiency across scenarios by 35% ~40%, which demonstrates significant advantages in enhancing platoon formation efficiency and stability.