Towards Optimizing Fuel Consumption in Railways: A Generic Greedy Approach in Continuous Space

Abstract

This paper addresses the challenge of producing fuel-optimal speed profiles for trains by transforming time-optimal profiles. In a timeoptimal speed profile, the train travels over a specific path with various speed limits in the shortest time. Our approach aims to adjust the time-optimal speed profile by extending its total duration to produce a fuel-optimal speed profile within that extended time frame. The proposed method greedily modifies parts of the given speed profile in a gradient descent manner, trying to maximize the ratio of fuel savings to time increase. Our analysis concluded that it is most effective to adjust either "Acceleration and Deceleration"or "Acceleration, Cruising and Deceleration" throttle sequences, with the former always being the best option.