Generalized approach to design supercapacitor-based storage devices integrated into urban mass transit systems

In the paper a new design methodology of storage devices for improving the performances of light transportation systems is proposed. A critical analysis is performed with respect to the stochastic variables involved in the description of the behavior of this complex system. Some considerations are performed in order to properly take into account various uncertainties at the aim of optimizing the size of storage devices and satisfying all the technical constraints. The core of the design procedure is a multivariable constrained optimization technique stochastically applied. In the numerical application, for sake of clarity, only the time displacement between two trains is considered as a stochastic variable described as a lognormal distribution function. The probabilistic properties of the output variables of the optimization procedure are then investigated.