Development of energy saving operation technology for punctuality and ride comfort by optimizing the point of target pattern recreation

Abstract

At present, there is a growing demand for energy saving to prevent global warming. Thus, the railway industry is also focusing on energy saving methods. Power consumption of running trains has a large variation of approximately 20% caused by drivers’ operation. Therefore, improving the running profile can considerably reduce energy consumption. Numerous algorithms for generating energy saving running profiles have been researched and developed. To adapt energy saving operation to various environments, we developed a technology that maintains punctuality without reducing the energy efficiency when temporary differences occur in driving conditions. We propose a method that determines the re-creation command point to complete the re-creation at the switching point of the driving operation in the existing energy-saving target pattern, to achieve both punctuality and ride comfort. As a result of verifying the effect of the proposed method on the conventional method via a simulation, it was confirmed that the proposed method can prevent the increase in the number of operation changes when the driving conditions change, whereas the conventional method increases the number of operation changes.