Reducing fuel consumption of diesel-electric locomotives using hybrid powertrain and fuzzy look-ahead control

Abstract

Diesel-electric locomotives consume a significant amount of fuel in rail transportation systems. The power transmission system of these locomotives is similar to that of hybrid electric vehicles, so the available diesel-electric locomotives can be promoted to series hybrid locomotives by adding an energy storage source. In this study, the GM SD40-2 locomotive is considered as a case study and the series hybrid structure for this locomotive is designed and simulated by adding a lithium-ion battery pack. Additionally, control strategy plays an important role in reducing the amount of fuel consumed by hybrid electric vehicles. The fuzzy look-ahead control is applied as an online approach for fuel consumption reduction in railway transportation. A fuzzy controller modifies throttle position by accounting for the battery state of charge, the gradient and desired speed of the path ahead. The model developed in this study for train motion simulation considers the locomotive subsystems and satisfies the experimental fuel consumption data specified in the locomotive’s catalog. A simulation of a freight train with the GM SD40-2 locomotive on a local track showed considerable improvement of fuel economy when using series hybrid structure in conjunction with our proposed algorithm for diesel-electric locomotives.

Keywords

Hybrid diesel-electric locomotive fuel consumption look-ahead control fuzzy control

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