Velaro – Customer Oriented Further Development of a High-Speed Train
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Vehicles l Rolling Stock Reprint from: ZEVrail – Volume 133, Issue 10, October 2009 Author: Dipl.-Ing. Martin Steuger, Erlangen Velaro – customer oriented further development of a high-speed train www.siemens.com/mobility ZEVrail 133 (2009) 10 October 1 Vehicles l Rolling Stock 2 ZEVrail 133 (2009) 10 October Vehicles l Rolling Stock Velaro – customer oriented further development of a high-speed train Dipl. Eng. Martin Steuger, Erlangen Abstract This article describes the development of the Velaro2 family from Siemens, starting with the first high-speed trainset in Europe with distributed traction, the ICE 31 of Deutsche Bahn AG. It explains how its on-going development caters to the customers’ requirements, how it is organized and how this application-oriented work process has influenced development of the fourth generation of the Velaro family. The article closes with a brief overview of the Velaro D project – the latest generation of interoperable multi-system trains for Europe to be ordered by Deutsche Bahn AG. 1 Development basis and control system with sophisticated diag- climb grades as steep as 40‰ and its high projects nostic functions, and the realization of braking performance, the cost-optimized the ICE 3 in two versions: one as nation- alignment of high-speed lines, such as 1.1 ICE 3 – the basis for al single-system trainset and one as inter- the new Cologne–Frankfurt/Main route, high-speed trainsets with nationally operable multi-system trainset. were soon a reality. Today, the ICE 3 is re- distributed traction These activities were paralleled by an in- garded as the flagship for the implemen- tensive design process involving a mock- tation of high-speed trainsets with dis- After having made positive commercial up of 1½ cars each of the standard ICE 3 tributed traction. The major benefits of experiences with its first generation of and tilting ICE T trains, which were then this concept – apart from a better distri- power car-hauled ICE trains, Deutsche presented in Poing near Munich in 1995 bution of the masses in the trainset and Bahn AG decided in 1993–1994 to pur- (Fig. 1). It was during this process that the low adhesion coefficient utilization – sue a revolutionary further development the official Corporate Design for future lie especially in the larger useable floor of rolling stock in the high-speed rail sec- ICE service was fully established. area. The operator can use this to trans- tor. From then on, nothing would stop port greater numbers of passengers while the abandonment of the power car con- The first trainsets entered revenue serv- maintaining the high comfort of the sin- cept in favor of a trainset with distributed ice on time for the opening of the World’s gle-deck concept. A single deck push-pull traction. The relevant contracts between Fair EXPO 2000 in Hanover, Germany. concept is does not come close to this in Deutsche Bahn AG and the manufactur- Since then, well over 200 million kilom- terms of capacity. Only a bi-level version ers’ consortium of Siemens and AEG were eters have been traveled by the total of offers comparable seating capacities, but concluded in 1995. This was followed 67 of these ICE 3 trains. with far less comfort. by a very demanding period of develop- ment and design, during which the tech- Within a decade, high-speed travel in nical design of ICE 3 took shape. There Germany witnessed the introduction of 1.2 The step from ICE 3 to was no lack of challenges. They called the ICE 1 as an extended train of 12 pas- Velaro Spain for the development of new power bogies senger cars and two power cars, its sub- and trailing bogies with the first-ever in- sequent development as the so-called When the Spanish railway company RENFE tegration of eddy-current brakes, an air- ICE 2 half-train with 6 cars and a driv- issued its major invitation to tender for supported climate control system, a new ing trailer and the capability to be oper- high-speed trains in 2001, Siemens de- ated as a multi-section train and, finally, cided to offer its own further develop- 1 ICE® is a registered trademark of the Deutsche Bahn its current state of development as ICE 3 ment of the ICE 3 concept and discontin- AG. with distributed traction. Thanks to the ue its involvement in the ICE work group 2 Velaro® is a registered trademark of Siemens AG. ICE 3’s powerful design, its ability to (ARGE). The trade name Velaro was cho- ZEVrail 133 (2009) 10 October 3 Vehicles l Rolling Stock ther. After a long project phase, the Ve- laro E trainsets were commissioned and have been operating in passenger service for RENFE since early 2008. Train service between Madrid and Barcelona has been very successful, with the trains achieving an average utilization of more than 75%. As a result, flight traffic between the cit- ies has dropped off drastically. In the first year of operation, the market share of the railway more than quadrupled in this re- spect from 11.8% to more than 48%! The Velaro trainsets are particularly reliable: Averaged over one year of operation, they traveled more than 600,000 kilometers between two technically-related delays Fig. 1: ICE 3 and ICE T mockups in Poing in 1995 of more than ten minutes. According to statements by RENFE, the punctuality of sen for this Spanish vehicle. In an initial new and somewhat more complex chal- the Velaro trainsets was 99.18% in the award round, Siemens succeeded in win- lenges, and entailed; on the other hand, first year of service and includes all de- ning an order for 16 trainsets, which was the new design of formerly non-Siemens lays that can be caused by infrastructural, later expanded by ten trains. parts. Then the customer RENFE came operating and technical problems. with additional requirements for an op- For Siemens, the separation from the erating speed of 350 km/h and the idea ARGE ICE signified, on the one hand, a of a three-class passenger system with 1.3 The further Velaro projects general reworking of the trainset since the sophisticated catering concepts that led interim publication of the Technical Speci- to the development of more complex in- The Spanish project was followed up by fications for Interoperability (TSI) and the terior furnishing variants. What’s more, two further successes in the marketing of further development of standards, such the refined interior ambience known from Velaro. In 2006, Siemens, together with a as in the field of fire protection, posed the ICE 3 was to be enhanced even fur- local Chinese partner, received a contract Fig. 2: Development of the Velaro family 4 ZEVrail 133 (2009) 10 October Vehicles l Rolling Stock for the delivery of 60 high-speed train- makes three things obvious. Firstly, it be- cisive significance when it comes to de- sets. The special challenges of this order comes clear that national requirements in veloping a market-oriented product. The consisted in the largely local production terms of infrastructure, network access requirements shown in the graphic be- of the trains and the widening of the car criteria, national standards and certifica- low (Fig. 3) were found to be decisively body by approx. 300 mm in order to ac- tion requirements inevitably make any important for the ongoing further devel- commodate a 2+3 seat arrangement in standardization or uniformity of the train- opment of the Velaro platform and were the passenger area. The latter enabled the sets more difficult. Secondly, the train op- therefore consistently integrated into the 200-m-long Velaro CRH 3 to carry more erators are fully justified in expecting to objectives of the platform development. than 600 passengers. The vehicle width receive a vehicle built to their specific re- Continuous contact with the customers is one of the optimization parameters of quirements; of course, this applies partic- ensures that a constant adjustment of the the Velaro family (Fig. 2) allowing op- ularly to high-speed rail travel which is various important target dimensions is al- erators to achieve optimal capacity and usually seen and marketed at a national ways possible. therefore profitability. level as a premium product. Some of them gain in significance, such as The second marketing success came Thirdly, however, it must also be clear requirements which are associated with when, after a joint advance project to clar- that, apart from higher costs, every new global warming, and some lose signifi- ify the technical requirements for a high- concept or design also involves a higher cance again in time. speed train system for operation in Rus- sia, Russian Railways RZD also placed an order with Siemens for Velaro trainsets. Similarly to the trains in China, these were also built using the wide version of the car body. However, the reason for this consisted in creating space to house the necessary thermal insulation against low ambient temperatures. Furthermore, it was necessary to adopt a variant of the 1520 mm broad-gauge bogie and to rear- range the air intakes and ducting to pre- vent snow from being sucked into the ve- hicle. The first ten-car Velaro RUS trains have been undergoing test and certifica- tion runs in Russia since early 2009. Another indicator of the success of the Ve- Fig. 3: Target dimensions for the development of the Velaro platform laro family is represented by this year’s order by the Chinese Ministry of Rail- level of technical risk – at least in com- A general trend of recent years lies in the ways to the Chinese partner of Siemens parison to long proven concepts.