A study of energy efficiency in rail vehicles

Abstract

Today, rail vehicles are frequently preferred both in urban and intercity transportation due to their high passenger capacity, speed and increasing environmental awareness. As in every field, energy efficiency studies have become compulsory in these vehicles. Because, they have high energy consumption even in their daily services. For energy efficiency, there are various strategies such as electrification losses reduction, utilization of regenerative braking and improvement of comfort function and efficient driving techniques have been performed in this paper. For this purpose, firstly, the driving of a rail vehicle has been modeled on Matlab considering all vehicle information, track information and operational constraints. Then, four different driving styles have been determined for the efficient use of energy and their effects on travel time and energy consumption have been examined. The study has been tested with the practical data of Ankaray metro line which has eleven stations and is 8.527 km long. According to the results of the paper, coasting control is more effective for long distances and reduction of the maximum speed is more convenient for short distances. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that thanks to the determined strategies, the vehicle can save up to 11.54-36.37% energy compared to practical driving.