Abstract
With the energy consumption rising in rail transport, the railway sector is showing increasing interest in the energy-efficient operation of freight trains. Freight trains require more complicated driving strategies than ordinary passenger trains do due to their heavy loads, especially in the long-distance steep downhill (LDSD) sections that are very common in freight rail lines in China. This paper studies the energy-efficient operation of a freight train considering LDSD sections. An optimal control model including regenerative and pneumatic braking is developed for the freight train. Then, when a train leaves/enters the LDSD section, we verify the uniqueness of control transitions and discuss the speed profile linkage between LDSD and its adjacent sections, which indicates that the periodic braking should be applied on LDSD sections for optimality. Additionally, given the same running time for the entire journey, our analysis shows that electrical braking-full braking strategy is more energy-efficient than coasting-full braking strategy on LDSD sections. Finally, a numerical algorithm for the optimal driving solution is proposed. The simulation results demonstrate that the driving strategies generated by the proposed algorithm performs better than those from fuzzy predictive control and field operation regarding energy saving.
Highlights
IntroductionDue to the rising energy consumption, more attention has been paid to freight trains
Freight trains play a major role in cargo transport all over the world
The train driver must deal with the energy-efficient operation problem of the freight train in long-distance steep downhill (LDSD) sections
Summary
Due to the rising energy consumption, more attention has been paid to freight trains. Taking China as an example, the hauling energy consumption of locomotives accounts for 70%–75% of the total energy consumption of the railways [1]. Due to economic and environmental concerns it’s very necessary to reduce the energy consumption of railways. Various methods have been adopted to reduce the energy consumption of freight trains, such as optimizing the timetable, changing the appearance of the locomotive to lower its aerodynamic resistance, installing regenerative brakes to feed the energy back to the traction network [2]. A good driving strategy is an economic method with great potential for reducing energy consumption, which is an interesting issue
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