Country’s first underground Metro is headed for another historic achievement soon by providing smoother journeys to its commuters in the near future. Aiming to upgrade its fleet, the Kolkata Metro Railway has collaborated with experts from IIT Kharagpur to develop an upgraded propulsion system enabling smooth and jerk-free rides.
Purple Line Metro
Country’s first underground Metro is headed for another historic achievement soon by providing smoother journeys to its commuters in the near future. Aiming to upgrade its fleet, the Kolkata Metro Railway has collaborated with experts from IIT Kharagpur to develop an upgraded propulsion system enabling smooth and jerk-free rides.
The authorities and engineers of Kolkata Metro Railway, along with the experts of the IIT-Kharagpur crossed a milestone last Saturday with the field testing of ‘DC-DC Chopper Project.’ The successful trial of the technology has paved the way for the implementation of a project that would make the coaches of the city Metro’s future fleet lighter and smoother. For the testing, according to official sources, a unit of the DC to DC chopper converter was developed by the experts of the IIT Kharagpur and Metro Railway Rolling Stock officials. The design was verified in a laboratory after success on a computer using computer simulation.
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On Saturday, two DC traction Motors were fitted on a bogie and tested by the experts to move ahead with the project. The testing was aimed to examine whether the modified propulsion unit is capable of driving a train.
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According to official sources, in order to make the propulsion system more efficient of thirteen ICF rakes with BHEL propulsion, which are presently being operated in Blue Line, Metro Railway has signed an MoU with IIT Kharagpur. Once this project is implemented then these ICF rakes will be capable of generating electricity at the time of braking. These rakes will consume drastically less energy and will be lighter in weight as the duty of the camshaft controller, equipment box and starting register shall be performed by this developed unit alone. Acceleration and deceleration of these rakes will be smooth and jerk-free.
As learnt from the city Metro office, with this technology in place, the performance of 3-phase propulsion would be obtained with the existing DC traction motor without changing the bogie to accommodate 3-phase induction. This technology, which is 100 per cent indigenous and very much Indian will be used for the first time in any Indian Metro System.
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