SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS AND OPTIMIZATION OF TRACTIVE ENERGY FOR RAILWAY ELECTRIC TRACTION SYSTEM

Abstract

Railway traction system is a common mode of transportation for long distance travel. It enhances the load carrying capacity and is comparatively cheaper than other modes of transport. Earlier, steam and diesel traction systems were common but now a days, they have been replaced by electric traction system. Electric motors are used in railway electric traction system such as electric multiple units and long distance trains. Such a system when operated under high speeds consumes a lot of energy from the supply line. This leads to increase in the cost of travel. As a result, the minimization of energy consumption with faster and better quality of train operation is desired. In this dissertation, power flow model of modern railway traction system has been presented and tractive energy consumption using speed-time and speed-distance curve has been studied. Tractive energy consumption model has been developed and sensitivity analysis of the same with respect to parameters of interest has been carried out. Further, various conventional as well as intelligent techniques of optimization have been studied in detail. Optimization of tractive energy is done by various optimization techniques (e.g. Interior Point Method, Pattern Search Method, Genetic Algorithm and Particle Swarm Optimization) and corresponding optimized parameters are obtained.