Abstract:
Incorporated with a receding horizon control (RHC)
approach, a penalty method is proposed to reduce energy wasted
by braking in a heavy haul train’s operation. The train’s practical
nonlinear model is linearized to design the RHC controller.
This controller is then applied to the train practical nonlinear
dynamics and its performances are analyzed. In particular, the
main focus in this study is on the brake penalty’s impact on the
train performances. Meantime, a fence method is presented to
tackle two issues. The first one is that all the cars in a train cannot
be controlled individually due to limit of available transmission
channels for control systems in a long train. The other one is that
the RHC approach suffers from heavy computation and memory
load. Simulations verified that the brake penalty presented in
the design can reduce a train’s energy consumption and intrain
forces remarkably without sacrificing the train’s velocity
tracking performance. Simulations also verified that the fence
method is essential to reduce the related computation load when
the RHC approach is applied to a long heavy haul train. Further,
it is demonstrated that the fence method can effectively shorten
computation time and reduce memory
