T
he funicular mountain trains can transport up to 3000 person/hour with a speed of 12 m/sec. The motors operating mountain train doors withstand high cycle operation combined with temperature, vibration and humidity variation. What are other challenges that the train door drives have to face ?
Safe Performance in Any Situation
Train doors are often perceived as failure-prone systems in rail vehicles. Malfunction of train doors can affect passengers’ safety & increase frequency of maintenance for railway operators. The electric drives operating the train doors should have adjustable closing force to freed up easily the passengers or their clothing or any other articles in the event of being pinched in the doors. They aslo should integrate a security function of an automatic emergency exit in case of power outage. As a result, the passengers are able to open the train door in extreme situations when no power is available.
Intelligent Fault Recovery
One of our customers, a manufacturer of funicular trains, was seeking to upgrade the mountain train doors with smart motors. One of the principal requirements was to ensure the motor electronics is powered even in case of power failure.
This function, called “Save Homing”, is vital in safety critical applications. Thanks to it, the motor retains its position in the event of power failure. Considering the customer’s requirements, we have developed the “Save Homing” function & integrated it into the SMi21 electronics of our DCmind Brushless motor.
Motion Control Accuracy and Reliability
The DCmind Brushless motor can be programmed with DCmind Soft having numerous pre-loaded application programs: automatic doors, valves, bollards, train doors, etc. In the standard software version, it is impossible to modify the torque value for every motor position. While in the funicular mountain railway, it is mandatory to have the motor torque variable in desired limits. The torque variations depend on whether the train goes up or down.
“We had to upgrade the software program to control our motor acceleration & deceleration as per the customer’s specific algorithm related to people’s safety”, precises Marc-Antoine Sebert, Software Development Engineer at Crouzet.
Turnkey, Easy-to-Use Solution
Thanks to the pre-loaded program on the motor, it is easy to install it into the train door system. The train technical service team enters the required parameters into the program and loads it to the motor to make the door operational at once.
The newly designed solution ensures all-round reliability of rail vehicle, which in turn helps to increase passenger comfort, safety and operational performance.
