Numerical study on wave phenomena produced by the super high-speed evacuated tube maglev train

Abstract

With the increasing demand of faster, safer, and more comfortable rail travel, the evacuated tube maglev train (ETMT) has gradually attracted hot concerns in recent years. According to Kantrowitz limit theory, ETMT may encounter chocked flows, leading to more complex generation and development of a series of waves as ETMT moves rapidly in the tube. To study the wave phenomena produced by ETMT running at the super high-speed, the computational domain geometry model was simplified and then 2-D axisymmetric compressible N-S equation was established in the paper. Dynamic mesh method and dynamic adaptive mesh method were used to simulate the real motion of ETMT and improve the capture accuracy of the waves respectively. Results show that the wave structure is mainly composed of expansion waves, reflected shock waves and normal shock waves as ETMT moves for enough time at the speed of 1250 km/h. The intensity of the normal shock wave in front of the head car experiences four states consisting of rapid increase, initial stability, sudden drop and final stability. In the wake, the flow velocity attenuates in a fluctuating way along the opposite motion direction of ETMT due to the complicated interaction between shock waves and expansion waves.