International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2013)

Automation in High Speed Rail-Road Transportation

Mr. Debabrata Roy1, Prof. Raghupati Goswami2, Dr. Sourish Sanyal3, Prof. Amar Nath Sanyal4
1
Assistant Professor of Electrical Engg., SEACOM College of Engg., Jala Dhulagari, Howrah, West Bengal, India
2
Chairman of the Trust, Ideal Institute of Engineering, Kalyani Shilpanchal, Kalyani, Nadia, West Bengal, India
3
Dept. of Electronics & Communication Engg., College of Engineering & Management, Kolaghat, Purba Midnapur, West
Bengal, India
4
Professor of Electrical Engg., Academy of Technology, Adisaptagram,Hooghly, West Bengal,India
Abstract - Manual control is sufficiently good for low Though the passenger traffic by rail has marginalized,
speed suburban ralways- there is practically no risk in it. the business is running well in Northeast Corridor (Boston–
However, for high speed rail automatic control must be Washington) and the Chicago area.
incorportaed in order to ensure safety and reliability as
manual control is sluggish and inaccurate for high speed
operation. The paper presents the design and development of
II. T HE T URBOTRAIN S IDING & HSR-T ECHNOLOGY
a PID-feedback control for high speed train running on In the 1960es, several jet-powered and gas turbine
Tokaido line. A program has been developed to find out the trainsappeared on the high-speed scene. These sorts of
forward path gain and the feedback factors to get the desired engines had a much higher power-to-weight ratio than
performance. MATLAB-tools have been used to find out the diesels, and the fuel was cheap – which made them well
transient response.
fitted to non-electrified service.
Keyword- Railroad Transportation, Modeling, Control Shinkansen, in Japan, was the first high speed train
system, Stability margin. introduced in 1964. The trains ran at speeds up to 210-
220 km/h. Soon after its success, HSR began to spread in
I. INTRODUCTION Europe. Ultimately Spain became the leader. Now, China
and India are also embarking on HSR-technology.
High Speed Rail (HSR) is altogether a different class of
Introduction of HSR was inspired on one hand by rising
railways. It operates at significantly higher speed compared oil-price and on the other by rising traffic congestions.
to ordinary rail- be it passenger or express. The trains are Growing interest in environmental safety and security was
normally designed to carry passengers but may sometimes another factor. The initial impetus was due to the growing
they may be used to carry freight. need for additional capacity and faster conveyance.
Railways were the first form of mass transportation on
land until the development of motorcars in the early 20th
III. CHARACTERISTICS AND T ECHNOLOGY
century. It had an effective monopoly on land transport.
Both streamlined steam locomotives and high-speed EMUs There are some common features in all high-speed rails.
were used for high speed services. The modern high-speed They are invariably electrically driven via overhead lines
rail era started in1903, while an electrical railcar and have their own in-built signalling. There is no level
manufactured by Siemens &Halske sped away at 203 km/h crossings. Advanced switches using very low entry and
(126 mph) on a military railway track. A later development frog angles are also often used.The improvement of
was high speed interurban services. The interurban was a standard gauge, overhead electrification and absence of
remarkable hybrid between a streetcar and a conventional sharp bends, have minimized the cost of HSR. A network
train. They were built and introduced both in Europe and of high speed rails is economically better than mixed
Asia in early 20th century. But the high-speed interurban traffic.Trains employing Magnetic Levitation(MAGLEV)
was basically a U.S. invention in which several HSR falls under a separate category.as they are incapable to
technologies were implemented. operate on conventional rails.
In most of the rich and technologically advanced The application of automatic control in high speed rail-
countries, the rail passenger transport declined due to fierce road transportation is increasing day by day.
competition with cars and buses, which ran on subsidized
streets. But in poorer countries like India and China, IV. DESCRIPTION O F T HE SYSTEM
railway transport continued to expand. The U.S. railways The equivalent block diagram for the automatic braking
have not given up the race. system of the Tokaido line high speed trains of Japan is
given in fig. 1.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2013)
The system has an amplifier, a brake and the train K p = 1.0; K d = 0.5 ; K a = 0.2 ;
dynamics in the forward path. It is equipped with PID
feedback. The forward path gains and the feedback factors By using our own computer program we get the
can be adjusted to get the desired response. following results:
Damping factor = 0.5; Peak overshoot = 16.3%; Peak
time = 1.814 sec; Settling time = 4 sec.; Now we verify the
results using MATLAB tools.
a. TIME DOMAIN RESPONSE USING MATLAB-TOOLS.

Step Response
1.4 System: sysmfb
Peak amplitude: 1.16
Overshoot (%): 16.3
At time (sec): 1.8
1.2

1
System: sysmfb
System: sysmfb Settling Time (sec): 4.04
0.8

Amplitude
Rise Time (sec): 0.822

0.6
Fig 1 Automatic control of rail-road transport
0.4

V. SYSTEM P ARAMETERS AND S PECIFICATIONS

0.2
With reference to the diagram given in fig. 2, The
braking system has a gain K 2 = 1000. The train is 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Time (sec)
approximated as a 2nd. order integrator with a gain K3
=0.001. We shall find out the amplifier gain K1 and the Fig. 2 Step response with: K a = 0.2; K d = 0.5; K = 1; K1 = 20
p

feedback factors K p , K d , K a for getting desired We get the following results using MATLAB: the
transient and steady state behaviour. The desired response damping factor = 0.5; % overshoot = 16.3%; peak time =
is given below: 1.814 sec; settling time = 4.04 sec. The tally is close to
what we have obtained from our own program.
a. Damping factor near to unity We also get from our analysis:
b. Peak overshoot within 1%;
c. Peak time within 3 sec.;  the steady state error in response to displacement and
d. Settling time within 2 sec.; velocity inputs are zero
e. Steady state error to acceleration input should be  the acceleration error constant = 20 and steady state
within 2.5%. error to acceleration input is 5%.
b. ADJUSTMENT OF PARAMETERS
VI. MATHEMATICAL T REATMENT & T HE RESULTS
The brake causes deceleration, it should not be subject to
The closed loop transfer function of the system is given much error. The steady state error to acceleration input is
as: unacceptably high. It should be within 2.5%. The error can
be reduced to 2.5% by increasing it to 40. The transient
C ( s) K1
M ( s)   performance is also not acceptable. The overshoot is much
R(s) (1  K1K a ) s  K1K d s  K1K p
2
more than specified.
(1)
nd
It is a 2 . order system. Initially we choose K1 = 20. By
trial and error, using a specially constructed program for
this problem, we choose the feedback factors as:

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2013)
The design requirements are very stringent. The
1.4
Step Response requirements for steady state and transient performance are
conflicting. The steady state error is specified, also the
System: sysmfb
1.2 Peak amplitude: 1.01 parameters of transient response. There is an adjustable
Overshoot (%): 0.722
At time (sec): 2.8 gain in the forward path and a PID feedback. Our task is to
System: sysmfb
1
Rise Time (sec): 1.25 adjust the value of the forward path gain as well as the
System: sysmfb
Settling Time (sec): 1.96 coefficients of proportional, derivative and integral
0.8
Amplitude

feedbacks to match the specifications and get the desired

0.6 results. This has been made successfully by the
simultaneous use of our own program and the MATLAB-
0.4 tools.
0.2 REFERENCES
[1] S.M. Shinners, Modern Control System Theory and Design. John
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 Wiley and sons.
Time (sec) [2] K. Ogata, Modern Control Engineering, Pearson Education
Fig. 3 Step response with: K a = 0.2; Kd = 0.95; K p = 1; K1 = 40 [3] M. Gopal, Modern control system theory, 2nd Ed., New Age
International
[4] M.E. Herniter., Programming in MATLAB, Thomson- Vikas
VII. ADJUSTMENT O F P ARAMETERS T O REACH T HE publishing House.
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