The Optimal Design of Braking System for Heavy
Haul Trains
Ma Yongfeng
School of Science, Dalian Jiaotong University
Dalian, Liaoning
Email: mayongfeng@djtu.edu.cn
Abstract—The train brake system is a complex pneumatic de-
vice whose performance and reliability are relatively important.
When the train is beging braked, the coupler force caused by the
inherent delays in pneumatic airbrakes, commonly used in freight
trains, becomes relatively large. The problem is even severe for
long freight trains where the delayed response involves heavy
longitudinal forces between vehicles. It is clear that proper design
of of braking system can reduce the damage between vehicles. In
this paper, firstly, according to the character of variational curve
of braking pressure, we adopt a simple function to simulate the
brake force. Secondly, we introduce an optimal control model to
minimize the brake stopping distance under safe coupler forces,
and prove the existence of optimal solution to the model. Finally,
we change the model to one without continuous state inequality
constraints by introducing penalty function.
I. I NTRODUCTION
With the development of transportation of railway, heavy
haul trains attract more and more attention of researchers.
More and more technical problem, especially, heavy longitude
forces between vehicles, occurs in the the braking process of
heavy haul trains.
In [1], the dynamical model on movement of freight is
given, and the optimal strategy is given. In [2], the air brake
system is studied to accurately estimate the braking at eack
railcar along the train based on air flow theory and distributed
valve principle. In [3], a 3D coupling dynamical model of
the train is given, and the dynamics performances of the train
under traction, braking and idling conditions on straight track,
curved track and ramp were simulated. Ansari [4] studied the
effect of different parameters, such as the couplers stiffness
and damping, train speed, train acceleration, load distribution
pattern, on the longitudinal train dynamics
There are two state of longitude movement of train, steady
and unsteady one. Through the theoretical analysis of longi-
tude dynamics and experiment, the longitudinal impulse of
freight trains mainly occurs in the transient process of train.
The main factors includes traction transmission in the startup
of locomotive, power transmission in the process of train brake
or brake release, and rigid connection between the vehicle
coupler buffer device. Whereas steady states is the movement
of train in constant or slowly varying force, and relative
displacement between the neighbouring compartments is very
*This work is partially supported by the natural science foundation of
Liaoning Province 20170540136
‹,(((
Zhao Xubao
College of Software, Dalian Jiaotong University
Dalian, Liaoning
the ith carriage FL
FAi , FBi
FGi+ FGi−
Fig. 1. Diagrammatic sketch of the horizontal forces applied to i-th wagon.
small, thus cannot influence the longitudinal impulse of freight
trains much.
In the runing of train, the factors which influence the
longitudinal impulse of freight trains can be divided into
fixed and time-varying ones. The fixed factor includes railway
marshalling, wagon coupler and draft gear and type of brake,
and the time-varying factor includes brake force and operation
resistance, et al.
The air braking systems are widely used in freight wagons.
The start time of braking force in different wagons is asyn-
chronous, which is one of the reasons causing longitudinal
forces between freight wagons. However, braking propagation
rate is already too rapid to improve. Therefore, to reduce the
longitudinal forces, we try to alter the character of step up of
brake cylinder.
Thus, an optimal control problem is proposed to minimize
the coupler force between adjacent wagons. Because of its
difficulties, we reduce it into an semi-infinite optimization
problem. On semi-infinite optimization with inequality con-
straint, one can refer to [5] and references therein.
The mass spring system that describes the movement of a
train is introduced, and its dynamical character is discussed in
the second section. In the third section, we take the braking
distance as the performance index and the parameters in brake
curves as the control vector, and propose an optimal control
model, and prove the existence of optimal solutions. The
numerical simulation is also given in this section.
II. N ONLINEAR DYNAMICAL S YSTEM
In studying the longitudinal dynamics of running wagons,
they often are considered as mass spring system[1]. Consid-
ering a wagon which runs along a horizontal straight track,
each railcar and locomotive can be considered as a mass ,as is
shown in Fig. 1. The train model is converted into concentrated
masses.

 The forces applied to each mass can be modeled as:
⎧ 
⎨ m1 x1 = FL − FG1 − FA1 − FB1 (t)
⎪
mi xi = FGi − FAi − FBi (t), i = 2, · · · , N − 1. (1)
⎪
⎩ (4)
mN xN = FGN − FAN − FBN (t)
where mi and xi are the quality and position of the i-
th wagon, respectively. FL denotes the traction force, and
it equals 0 in the braking process. FGi denotes the coupler
force of the i-th wagon, and it is depended by the relative
positions between the i-th wagon and its adjacent wagons.
FAi denotes running resistence of the i-th wagon, and it is
adopted as mi (1.96 + 0.00105v + 0.000549v 2 ) here[1], where
v denotes the speed of the wagon. FBi (t) denotes the braking
force of the i−th wagon at time t, which can be changed by
adjusting the brake disc.
For simplicity, we assume brake force is proportional to
the brake cylinder pressure here, but it is also an intractable
optimal control problem because of monotonicity of control
functions. When the train is braked, the brake cylinder pressure
increases slowly in the begining, and begins faster after that,
and then increases slowly again, and tends to a constant.
Therefore, we assume:
Assumption 1. FBi (t) has the form:
 We intend to stop the train in a distance as shortest as
0, t < di
FBi (t) = ai (t−di )2
1+bi (t−di )2 , t ≥ di
Where Δ denotes the delay in cylinder pressure between
the adacent railcars, and di denotes (i − 1)Δ, respectively.
In reality, the displacement in the absence of traction force
and velocity of each railcar is finite. Hence, it is meaningful
to restrict both xi (t) and vi (t) in a set X, and control vector
in a admissible control set U defined as below:
FAN − FBN )/mN , i = 2, 3 · · · , N − 2 Initial value is
Y0 = (0, v0, 0, v0, · · · , 0, v0)T . Then the vector form of (3)is

Y  = h(t, Y, u) i = 1, 2, · · · , 2N
Y (0) = Y0 .
Proposition 1. For all u ∈ U , the system (4) has an unique
solution, written as Y (t) = Y (t; 0, Y0 , u). Y (t; 0, Y0 , u) is
continous and continuously differential in u ∈ U .
Theorem 2. Let Ti be the first time at which the velocity
of i−th railcar vanishes. If vi (Ti , u) = 0, then Ti depends
continuously on u.
Proof. Because vi (Ti , u) = 0, vi (Ti , u) = 0 and vi is
continuously differentiable on t and u, it follows directly from
Implicit Function Theorem.
Note. when a train running at high speed is braked, it calls for
a relatively long time before the velocity of its railcar becomes
zero. At this time, FBi (t) becomes much greater than coupler
forces, thus vi = (FGi − FAi − FBi (t))/mi < 0. Therefore
the condition vi (Ti , u) = 0 in Theorem 2 is general.
III. OPTIMAL CONTROL MODEL
possible, in the same time, we wish keep the coupler forces
(2) between the adjacent wagons below a safe threshold Cm .
Because of the inherent delays in pneumatic airbrakes,
commonly used in freight trains, the coupler forces between
the adjcent wagons increases when the train is braked. In this
paper, we try to optimise the design of brake-shoe, which
will helps to brake the train in a displacement as shortest as
possible after the brake system starts to work. We assume
that


N
Assumption 2. When velocity of certain wagon becomes to
Y (t, u) ∈ X  [x∗i , x∗i ] × [v∗i , vi∗ ], ∀t ∈ [0, T ].
i=1
zero, the train will stops in a relatively short displacement.


N The optimal control problem using the braking distance as
u∈U  [0, a∗i ] × [b∗i , b∗i ]. the cost functional, the parameters in FBi (t) as control vector,
i=1 based on nonlinear spring mass model, is given as below:
Let vi (t) = xi (t), then(1) becomes
⎧ 
⎪
⎪ x 1 = v1 min x1 (T )
⎪
⎪ u∈Uad
⎪
⎪ v1 = (−FG1 − FA1 − FB1 (t))/m1 ⎧ 
⎪
⎪ ⎪ Y = h(t, Y, u)
⎪ 
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎨ x i = vi
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪ Y (0) = Y0 .
⎪
⎨
vi = (FGi − FAi − FBi (t))/mi , i = 2, · · · , N − 1.
⎪
⎪
⎪ xN = vN s.t. Y2i (t) > 0, t ∈ [0, T ).
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪ max k |Y2i−1 (t) − Y2i+1 (t)| ≤ Cm .
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ vN
= (FGN − FAN − FBN (t))/mN ⎪
⎪ 1≤i≤N −1,t∈[0,T ]
⎪
⎪ ⎪
⎩
⎩ min Y2i (T ) = 0
1≤i≤N
(3) (5)
Denoting Y (t) = (x1 (t), v1 (t), · · · , xN (t), vN (t)) as state
vector, and u = (a1 , b1 , · · · , aN , bN ) as control vector, De- A. Existence of optimal solution
note h2i−1 (t, x; a) = vi , h2 = (FG1 − FA1 − FB1 )/m1 , h2i = Theorem 3. T and the maximal coupler force depends con-
(FGi − FGi+1 − FAi − FBi )/mi , · · · , h2N = (FGN − tinuously on control vector u


Proof. That T depends continuously on u follows from the
fact that T = mini∈{1,2,···N } Ti and Ti depends continuously
on u.
The maximal coupler force depends continuously on
xi (t, u) which is continuously dependent on u, thus we
deduce that the maximal coupler force depends continuously
on control vector u.

Theorem 4. 1) The feasible region of system (5) is a

nonempty sequentially compact set in R2N .
2) There is at least one of the feasible region which contains
interior point.
Proof. 1) For an arbitary sequence {ui }i=1,2,3,··· in U , be-
cause of the boundedness of U , there exists an convergent Fig. 2. The minimum object values obtained from different initial points.
subsequence {uik }, the limit of which is denoted by
u0 . Because Y (t; 0, Y0 , u) is continuous on all of its
variables, and Y (t; 0, Y0 , ui ) ∈ X, it is known that
Y (t; 0, Y0 , u0 ) ∈ X, then u0 is in the feasible region.
2) Letting O = (0, 0, · · · , 0, 0), we can work out that
maxt∈[0,T ] maxi∈{1,2,··· ,N } FGi (t, O) = 0 < Cm . Be-
cause FGi depends continuously on xi s and xi de-
pends continuously on u, it is known that there exists
a neighbourhood B(O, δ) ∩ U , for every u in which
maxt∈[0,T ] maxi∈{1,2,··· ,N } FGi (t, u) < Cm . Therefore,
there is interior point in the feasible region.

Theorem 5. Solution of optimal control problem (5) exists

Proof. It can be concluded by Theorem 2 and character of
continuous function defined in finite dimensional closed set.

Fig. 3. The optimal brake forces calculated by model (6)

B. Model transformation
For the optimal control problem (5), it is difficult to cope
with the continuous inequility constraints, that is, it is a semi- C. Numerical Results
infinite optimization problem. To overcome this difficulty, we
define an approximate problem, where the state constraint is (6) can be considered as an abstract optimization problem,
treated as the penalty function. which can be solved by virtue of functions ode45 and fmincon
in MATLAB[6]. However, it is a nonconvex optimization,
thus there always exist more than one local minimizers. To
overcome this difficulty, we take 150 initial points in feasible
min Y1 (T ) + λp(t, Y ).
u∈Uad region for calculating the potential global minimizer. The
⎧
⎪  minimum calculated by fmincon is plotted in Fig. 2, which
⎨Y = h(t, Y, u)
indicates that there exists several minimums.
s.t. Y (0) = Y0 . (6)
⎪
⎩ Among all the optimized result, the smallest value is 696.74,
min1≤i≤N Y2i (T ) = 0
which correspond that the train will run 696.74 meters before
it stops, and the cushion forces in all the time is lower than the
For simplicity, here we take the penalty function as:
max allowable cushion force. The corresponding brake force is
p(t, Y ) = max{ max max shown in Fig. 3, where the solid curve correspond to the brake
i=1,2,··· ,n−1 t∈[a,b] force of the locomotive, and the dashed curve correspond to
k |(Y2i−1 (t, u) − Y2i+1 (t, u))| − Cm , 0}, one of the 4th traincar, and the dotted curve correnspond to
one of the 5th traincar, and the brake forces of 2nd and 3rd
but not the quadrature form. traincar are very close to the x-axis.


 IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a simplified method for optimizing the air
brake system in freight trian is presented. This method is easy
to understand and program. However, some oversimplified
forces, such as cushion force, and the form of brake force
may lead to a result conflicting with one suggested in [1]. In
other hand, this problem is nonconvex and nondifferential, and
,it is become difficult to solve with the increasing of number
of the freight train. Thus, methods with lower computation
complexity are expected to be proposed.
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