Abstract
In recent years, there have been significant activities in the development of hybrid, battery electric and alternative fuel (e.g., LPG, LNG, CNG) locomotives. However, to date there is a limited number of publications on the usage of such modelling and simulation approaches for hydrogen-powered rail vehicles, and almost no publications on hydrogen-powered heavy haul locomotives. A conceptual heavy haul hydrogen-powered locomotive has been designed and studied with the application of advanced simulation techniques used in recent locomotive/train/track damage studies. The detailed locomotive model includes multibody subsystems for the mechanical system of the locomotive and a traction power system implemented in the Matlab/Simulink software package. The traction performance evaluation has been performed through the delivery of traction effort characteristics of the proposed locomotive through co-simulation between multibody software and Matlab/Simulink and the evaluation of locomotive traction performance in a train configuration where the developed hydrogen-powered locomotive has been placed in a head-end locomotive consist for hauling a heavy haul train. The paper presents a summary of the simulation results, and detailed discussion of the limitations that have been identified in the approach.
