Research Note: Energy Saving in Railway Transportation using Particle Swarm Optimization

Increasing trend to use railway transport as one pillar of transporting passengers and goods in one hand، and daily reduction of available oil resources and as a result fuel reduction and also solving of pollution environmental problem in other hand illustrate importance of more studies and researches in this domain. Due to optimized energy consumption in railway industry that is very important، we can use optimization algorithms. One of intelligent and capable algorithms in optimization problems is Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm as one of the newest optimization algorithms. Besides suggesting a comprehensive model of train movement dynamics and its fuel consumption، a novel and applicable method to save energy using PSO algorithm has also been suggested in this paper. To illustrate the proposed method more clearly، some applicable scenarios with their simulation results are considered and analyzed during the study. At the end، some worthwhile suggestions for future researches are presented.