Energy storage systems to exploit regenerative braking in DC railway systems: Different approaches to improve efficiency of modern high-speed trains

The growing attention to environmental sustainability of transport systems made necessary to investigate the possibility of energy optimization even in sectors typically characterised by an already high level of sustainability, as in particular the railway system. One of the most promising opportunity is the optimization of the braking energy recovery, which has been already considered in tramway systems, while it is traditionally overlooked for high-speed railway systems. In this research work, the authors have developed two simulation models able to reproduce the behavior of high-speed trains when entering in a railway node, and to analyze the impact of regenerative braking in DC railway systems, including usage of energy storage systems. These models, developed respectively in the Matlab-Simscape environment and in the open source Modelica language, have been experimentally validated considering an Italian high-speed train. After validation, the authors have performed a feasibility analysis considering the use of stationary and on-board storage systems, also by taking into account capital costs of the investment and annual energy saving, to evaluate cost-effectiveness of the different solutions. The analysis has shown the possibility to improve the efficiency of high-speed railway systems, by improving braking energy recovery through the installation of such storage systems

Design of a hydraulic servo-actuation fed by a regenerative braking system

Many conventional truck and working machines are equipped with additional hydraulic tooling or manipulation systems which are usually fed through a mechanical connection with the internal combustion engine, involving a poor efficiency. In particular, this is a common situation for industrial vehicles whose mission profiles involves a relevant consumption of energy by the on board hydraulic systems, respect to the one really needed for only traction purpose. In this work it is proposed an innovative solution based on the adoption of a system aimed to recover braking energy in order to feed an efficient on board hydraulic actuation system. The proposed system is then adopted to a real application, an Isuzu truck equipped with a hydraulic tooling for garbage collection. A prototype of the system has been designed, assembled and tested showing a relevant improvement of system efficiency and the feasibility of the proposed approach. In the paper the proposed solution is presented, showing the simulation models and preliminary validation results including experimental devices assembled to perform the tests

Battery lifetime of electric vehicles by novel rainflow-counting algorithm with temperature and C-rate dynamics: Effects of fast charging, user habits, vehicle-to-grid and climate zones

The adoption of electric vehicles is expected to soon widespread to cope with energy transition needs; however, concerns on battery lifetime arise, especially related to charging behaviors, vehicle usage habits, vehicle-to -grid and weather conditions. In fact, lifetime battery modeling is a challenging dynamic to characterize, as it involves complex chemical processes related to charging, discharging and temperature dynamics over long time spans that are often difficult to dominate, given the large uncertainties. Having a fatigue-like behavior, the battery aging has sometimes been modeled using rainflow-counting algorithms, yet traditional modeling is not holistic and approximations are used, especially when considering temperature or current dynamics. Based on experimental data, this paper aims at developing a holistic battery degradation model based on rainflow-counting algorithm to properly account for all major determinants of capacity loss, namely cycling usage, calendar lifetime, dynamic temperature and battery current. The approach is coupled with a physical-electro-thermal modeling of the vehicle system, developed in Modelica language, to accurately simulate the intertwined thermal and electrical behavior of the system subject to different usage charging behaviors, including slow and fast charging, as well as vehicle-to-grid application. The proposed case study shows the expected lifetime of electric vehicles to be comparable with of traditional cars (10-20y) and that the proposed temperature -dependent battery modeling enables reducing estimation errors up to 27%. A sensitivity on different climate zones has been considered and results suggest that cool climates can increase life expectancy by 30% with respect to hot climates in typical Italian contexts

Heavy-duty hybrid transportation systems: Design, modeling, and energy management

This chapter is centered on the design, modeling and energy management of heavy-duty transportation systems. After showing general definitions and conventions, the problem of energy management is addressed with reference to heuristic approaches and global optimization control techniques. After presenting the problem in the most general formulation, a detailed case study is shown, related to the design of a working machine typically used in construction site. The main steps are modeling of the conventional hydraulic working machine, identification of an electrified hybrid architecture, selection of a heuristic energy management strategy to be implemented online, verification and comparison with respect to offline optimal control solution, in order to have a benchmark with the selected strategy

Use of Modelica language to simulate electrified railway lines and trains

Simulation of multi-engineering systems typically requires many issues to be solved, which are to be addressed by developing appropriate modeling and simulation programming techniques. In the last years, the authors have participated in several studies in which they analyzed in detail electrified railway systems and simulated them using Modelica language. After a few years of study, despite the huge complexity of these systems, it has appeared evident that Modelica language is very well suited and able to effectively solve the typical issues they present. While specific railway system simulations have already been discussed in specific papers, whose focus was on application and actual results, in this paper, the authors show how to use Modelica language to solve specific modeling issues through suitable programming techniques. Moreover, the issues to be solved and the conceived techniques may be interpreted in a general way and to be applied also in different engineering domains. Finally, this paper briefly recalls the principal results obtained in previous specific papers, in which these techniques were fully implemented