Optimization of horizontally curved track in the alignment design of a high-speed maglev line

Abstract

This paper presents an optimal solution for the alignment of horizontally curved track in a high-speed maglev line, in which the minimum length of the curved track is taken as a major objective function and the satisfaction of the minimum comfort level of passengers is considered as a boundary condition to constrain the selection of alignment parameters of the curved track. To verify the optimal solution provided by this study and assess the effects of viaduct subsystem and its interaction with train subsystem, the dynamic model of a coupled maglev train-curved viaduct system is numerically established, experimentally validated, and explicitly used to compute the responses of the train subsystem and viaduct subsystem. The computed results show that the comfort indexes computed from the dynamic model are comparable with those from the optimal solution. The parametric studies also show that with the increase of vehicle speed, the optimal radius of the circular track and the optimal length of the transitional track both increase but the cant and the cant deficiency remain constant.

Keywords:

• Horizontally curved track
• alignment design
• high-speed maglev line
• optimization
• minimum length
• comfort level

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research work is financially supported by the National Key Technology R&D Program of 12th Five-Year Plan of China (Project No: 2013BAG19B00-02-03). The joint Ph.D. scholarship and the collaborative research project with the Beijing University of Technology (PolyU:4-GD) provided by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University are appreciated.