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There is a strong demand for improving brake system performance of Japanese Shinkansen which is a high speed railway to shorten the stopping distance at the time of an emergency such as a huge earthquake. An emergency brake for conventional train is a wheel disk brake system that is affected by rail tread surface condition (dry or wet condition), because of using friction (adhesion) between a wheel and rail. In order to achieve a high deceleration at the time of over 300 km/h, another complementary brake system guaranteed a stable braking force without the friction is required. In addition, it has to be a lightweight and small equipment space so that a passenger cabin capacity may not be affected. In this study, we discussed a small-sized aerodynamic brake system using an air drag panel. From the computational fluid dynamics using turbulent flow model and the wind tunnel experiment, the suitable shape of air drag panel, arrangement and an opening-and-closing mechanism of the panel were developed. In addition, a full-scale prototype aerodynamic brake device was designed and manufactured. Its aerodynamic characteristics were examined on a large wind tunnel with high Reynolds number. It was proven that the target braking force can be obtained with the small-sized aerodynamic brake placed into a thick turbulent boundary layer around the train at a running speed of 300 km/h.
Hajime TAKAMI (Tue,) studied this question.