Energy-Efficient Train Control

Book excerpt: Rail is potentially a very efficient form of transport, but must be convenient, reliable and cost-effective to compete with road and air transport. Optimal control can be used to find energy-efficient driving strategies for trains. This book describes the train control problem and shows how a solution was found at the University of South Australia. This research was used to develop the Metromiser system, which provides energy-efficient driving advice on suburban trains. Since then, this work has been modified to find practical driving strategies for long-haul trains. The authors describe the history of the problem, reviewing the basic mathematical analysis and relevant techniques of constrained optimisation. They outline the modelling and solution of the problem and finally explain how the fuel consumption can be minimised for a journey, showing the effect of speed limits and track gradients on the optimal driving strategy.