A novel approach for decreasing driving energy consumption during coasting and cruise for the railway vehicle

Abstract

As for a railway vehicle, its kinetic energy comes from driving energy and is the practical motive power to push the vehicle forward. It is necessary to enhance the conversion efficiency of driving energy into kinetic energy for the economic profit and environmental benefit. This paper proposes an effective methodology to decrease driving energy consumption by optimizing the damping coefficients of the vehicle. The systematical calculation method of driving energy for the railway vehicle during the coasting phase is proposed and certificated according to the law of conservation of energy. The consumptions of kinetic energy and traction energy are selected as the research objectives for the coasting and cruise phases respectively, and the vehicle running safety and ride comfort are meanwhile considered as the basic requirements. For each type of suspension damper, the effect of its damping coefficient (DC) on the research objective is studied by dynamics simulations to narrow the distribution range of DCs. Finally the optimal combinations of DCs are proposed. It is demonstrated that the optimized vehicle model can decrease nearly 4% driving energy consumption. The approach proposed in this study can also be used to optimize other parameters of a railway vehicle for energy conservation.