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Environmentally‐friendly Aspects and Innovative Lightweight Traction System Technologies of the Shinkansen High‐speed EMUs
Author(s) -
Hagiwara Yoshiyasu
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
ieej transactions on electrical and electronic engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.254
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1931-4981
pISSN - 1931-4973
DOI - 10.1002/tee.20253
Subject(s) - engineering , automotive engineering , converters , traction motor , electrical engineering , train , electronics , voltage , cartography , geography
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. Copyright © 2008 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.