Energy-Efficient Rail Transit Vertical Alignment Optimization: Gaussian Pseudospectral Method
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 148, Issue 1
Abstract
Energy efficiency is an important research topic in rail transit operations. Energy-efficient vertical alignment is a practical consideration during the line design process. Proper vertical alignment can reduce the train running energy consumption during the entire life cycle of the operation line. Most existing studies solved such problems through heuristic algorithms; exactly how much energy efficiency the vertical alignment can bring is still an unknown question. This study presents an energy-efficient line vertical alignment optimization model with the objective of minimum energy consumption and running time deviation and proposes an exact solution approach, the Gaussian pseudospectral method (GPM), to make this exploration. The optimization problem was transformed into the description form of the optimal train control problem. GPM was used to discretize the optimal control problem into a nonlinear programming problem, and the sequential quadratic programming algorithm completed the solution. The application of China’s Guangzhou Line 18 shows that the GPM has a better effect in solving energy-efficient vertical alignment than a heuristic algorithm. The results indicate that the presented approach can effectively improve the energy efficiency of the rail transit system.
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Data Availability Statement
All of the authors of this article hereby declare some or all data, models, or code generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Open data can be provided as follows:
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Solving code (part), and
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Data of the real-world case (part).
Acknowledgments
This research is supported by the National Key Research and Development Plan (2016YFE0201700); National Natural Science Foundation of China (71971019); Programme of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (B18004); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2020JBZD007, 2019JBM039); and TCT Funding Program (9907006511, 9907006518).
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Journal of Transportation Engineering, Part A: Systems
Volume 148 • Issue 1 • January 2022
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© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Feb 24, 2021
Accepted: Jun 25, 2021
Published online: Nov 3, 2021
Published in print: Jan 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Apr 3, 2022
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