DEVELOPMENT OF THE KOREAN TILTING-TRAIN AND ITS SIMULATED RUN-TIME COMPARISON WITH NON-TILTING TRAIN ON THE CENTRAL LINE

초록

Korea is a mountainous country, with as much as 70% of the area is covered by hills and mountains. This geography places constraints on the minimum radius of curvature for the rail network and keeps from speeding up due to a lot of curves on railways. However, for attracting more traffic into the railway, it is important for railway to cost-effectively improve the competitiveness, espe-cially as regards travel time or schedule speed. Thus, it was expected that the speed of trains could be enhanced on the existing railway network without a huge investment in infrastructure by using tilting trains. Running time for tilting train is one of the most important factors, with which will be done whether the commercialization of tilting train is needed or not. In this paper, the running time and time saving of tilting train was evaluated compared with today’s conventional trains and non-tilting trains, based on the Central line, which was candidate for tilting train operation between Cheong- nyangni and Youngju. So the time saving could be separated into two effects by higher track top-speed and tilting devices. We found a significant reduction of the journey times as of 2013 compared with today’s conventional trains. Approximately a 36% reduction is expected on the Central line. But the 90% of this reduction is due to the increased track speed through upgrading the line and the rest 10% by tilting technology. This large difference is explained by the fact that many sections of the line were rebuilt or will be rebuilt to larger curve radii, thus this leads not to fully using the speed benefits through tilting. Also, in the near future, the difference in running time between tilting and non-tilting trains will be more decreased, as most of the sections on candidate route are to be straightened.