Analysis and simulation of energy-efficient control of a train

In railway transportation industry, punctuality and energy efficiency have always been given close attention and become two important evaluation indexes of service quality and economic benefit. From the perspective of traction energy consumption, the problem of energy-efficient train control is discussed, with the constraint of punctuality taken into consideration in a given section. Firstly, the mathematical model of train operation control considering both control variables and state variables constraints is described. By introducing electromechanical efficiency of a train into the optimality criterion for energy consumption, a new method for the analysis of energy-efficient of the optimal train control is proposed based on the maximum principle. This article also gives theoretical analysis to the application conditions of optimal train control sequences in two cases respectively when the given journey time is much longer than or infinitely close to the minimum time of flat-out operation. On this basis, the algorithm to find optimal train control is divided into two stages, which are rough adjustment and fine adjustment. In the stage of fine adjustment, the concept of energy efficiency ratio is introduced to determine the optimal adjustment direction for target of both energy efficiency and punctuality, and it improves efficiency of this algorithm remarkably.