Title: Estimation of running resistance of electric trains based on on-board telematics system

Authors: Szilárd Aradi; Tamás Bécsi; Péter Gáspár

Addresses: Department of Control for Transportation and Vehicle Systems, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1111 Műegyetem rkp. 3., Budapest, Hungary ' Department of Control for Transportation and Vehicle Systems, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, H-1111 Műegyetem rkp. 3., Budapest, Hungary ' Institute for Computer Science and Control, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H-1111 Kende u. 13-17, Budapest, Hungary

Abstract: Advances in railway telematics and the large amount of data obtained from train services enable the development of methods that are capable of further improving energy efficiency through the evaluation, control or prediction of energy utilisation of the railways. The paper proposes a method for determining the longitudinal running resistance of electric trains based on the measurements of on-board telemetric units of the locomotives. The purpose of the algorithm is to resolve the parameters of the commonly used polynomial resistance formula for specific locomotive and rolling stock types. In contrast with the classic measurements, such as tractive effort, dynamometer or drawbar and the coasting methods, the algorithm uses data from actual train runs, hence there is no need for closed test tracks or special measurement scenarios, although, naturally, the measurement conditions, such as track inclinations and rolling stock loads, must be known.

Keywords: rail transport; rail vehicles; running resistance; parameter estimation; electric trains; on-board telematics; railways; railway telematics; energy efficiency; locomotives; rolling stock loads; track inclination; heavy vehicles.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHVS.2015.071689

International Journal of Heavy Vehicle Systems, 2015 Vol.22 No.3, pp.277 - 291

Received: 11 Nov 2014
Accepted: 10 Jun 2015

Published online: 14 Sep 2015 *

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