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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 104
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE
Edited by: J. Pombo
Paper 312

Elimination of Failures in Railway Gearboxes by Regenerative Coasting

A. Bracciali and F. Piccioli

Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università di Firenze, Italy

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
A. Bracciali, F. Piccioli, "Elimination of Failures in Railway Gearboxes by Regenerative Coasting", in J. Pombo, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 312, 2014. doi:10.4203/ccp.104.312
Keywords: gearbox, vibrations, bearings, failure, cage, railway, metro, traction control, regenerative coasting, power recirculation.

Summary
Railway gearboxes are subjected to vibrations arising from gear meshing, roller bearings forces and wheel-rail contact. This paper shows how peculiar service conditions made the application of a well known and perfectly working gearbox installed on a metro vehicle rather critical. After a long investigation, the root cause of the problem was found in running conditions at top speed, which happened for long distances in coasting, being a rather long section of the line made of quite distant stations on a mild slope line, a situation that that kind of vehicle never encountered in other lines. Remedies are discussed with reference to mechanical and electric features of the vehicle. The adoption of a new procedure, called "regenerative coasting" allowed to potentially solve the problem of premature failures in service.

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