Environmentally‐friendly Aspects and Innovative Lightweight Traction System Technologies of the Shinkansen High‐speed EMUs

Abstract

In 1964, the Tokaido Shinkansen marked the start of the world's first commercial service high-speed railway that operates at over 200 km/h. Since then, the Tokaido Shinkansen has demonstrated successful business and technological advancement. With the speeding-up of the Shinkansen, environmental matters such as noise and vibration have become critical issues. Measures taken to counter noise and vibration-such as weight reduction and aerodynamics-also effect global environmental measures to reduce energy consumption and CO 2 emission. With the introduction of the Series 300, there was a system change of applying an AC drive system, and the lightweight body realized performance improvement over the earlier Series 0.The high-speed EMUs have readily taken advantage of technological innovation such as those achieved in electronics technology. In particular, an innovative AC drive system comprising a power converter with a GTO thyristor and asynchronous motors realized a high-performance and lightweight traction system for high-speed EMUs in the 1990s. Furthermore, recent innovations in electronics technology, such as low switching loss power devices and high-power permanent magnets, have improved the AC drive systems of the high-speed EMUs of the 21st century.This article starts out by introducing environmentally friendliness of the Shinkansen trains in terms of low energy consumption by means of traction system change, and then proceeds to describe the recent technological innovations that have given birth to lightweight traction systems, such as the Permanent Magnet Synchronous traction Motor (PMSM) and power converters with train-draft-cooling systems. The article concludes by summing up the environmentally friendly aspects of the Tokaido Shinkansen. 

Pantograph–catenary electrical contact system of high-speed railways: recent progress, challenges, and outlooks

“…In 1964, Japan built the world's first high-speed railway-Tokaido Shinkansen, with a running speed of 210 km/h [36], as shown in Figure 10 shows the development process of Shinkansen pantograph-catenary system in Japan. At the initial stage of the opening of Shinkansen, the pantograph-catenary system was composed of PS200A pantograph and a complex chain suspension catenary with elastic combined suspension string.…”

Solar Energy for Traction of High Speed Rail Transportation: A Techno-economic Analysis

“…The Traction system of the Shinkansen high speed EMU's have 56 asynchronous motors of 305 kW each giving a rated power per train of 17,080 kW, [19]. Frequency of service planned is 2 trains running up and 2 trains running down every hour.…”

358168 DEVELOPMENT OF TRAIN-DRAFT-COOLING POWER CONVERTERS FOR THE SHINKANSEN HIGH-SPEED TRAIN(Coustomer Environment and Service,Technical Session)

“…Train-draft-cooling power converters are advantageous in that they are lighter in weight since cooling blower motors, fans and liquid cooling mediums are not required. Moreover, their simple structure, which does not comprise the cooling medium and cooling system, will contribute to easier-maintenance, higher reliability, eco-harmony, such as reduction in green-house effect causing gases, and cost-reduction [4]. On these backgrounds, we started to conduct research and development on train-draft-cooling power converters for the Shinkansen high-speed train, which was the first application in the Shinkansen history [5].…”