The development of high-speed railways in China has changed the transportation pattern in China, and has also profoundly affected various fields such as economy, politics, and culture. China’s high-speed railways have gradually formed a network from scratch, gradually connecting points to lines, and forming a high-speed railway network. As a “infrastructure maniac”, high-speed rail routes run through the vast river from north to south, and with the help of technology, they have also gnawed off the hard bone of “extreme cold weather”.
Since the beginning of winter, Northeast China has experienced multiple cold wave weather, with the lowest temperature of about minus 50 degrees Celsius. In this extremely cold environment, a series of high-speed railway trains are still galloping at full speed, including the newly put into operation of the Fuxing High Cold Intelligent Multiple Unit in the northernmost alpine region of China. Relying on a number of “anti freezing” technologies, it has passed the test of extreme cold.
When operating in extremely cold regions, there will be problems with snow accumulation at the bottom of the vehicle, low temperature antifreezing and cracking prevention of the vehicle body structure, freezing and blocking prevention of the circulation system, and idling and sliding problems of trains under low temperature conditions, which ultimately affect the operation safety.
In response to these problems, China Railway Harbin Bureau Group Co., Ltd. has developed a set of operational safety measures to cope with severe cold, ice and snow weather, relying on advanced technology. With the support of artificial intelligence technology, the team has developed a set of intelligent image recognition technology that can automatically identify the snow and ice conditions of the bogie. After the completion of operation and warehousing of the multiple units, targeted low-pressure and warm water spraying can be carried out on key parts to quickly peel off and melt the snow and ice on the bogie.https://www.slw-ele.com/
In terms of efficiency, in the past, it took 16 people and 4 hours to complete the ice melting and snow removal operation for a group of multiple unit trains. It only took 2 people to operate for 1 hour, which reduced the time for the multiple unit ice removal operation and effectively accelerated the train turnover efficiency.
In addition to “optimizing” the vehicle body, artificial intelligence technology can also improve the operation route: It is reported that natural disasters and foreign matter monitoring systems installed along the high-speed railway, coupled with various sensors, can identify wind speed, snow thickness, and other factors, and “guide” trains to switch to different “speeds” for different wind and snow conditions.
In addition to applications in extreme weather, artificial intelligence is also playing an increasingly important role in daily maintenance. Generally, when riding on high-speed trains, you often see electrical equipment with numerous pillars and dense spider nets. Its professional name is catenary, which delivers “electric fuel” to multiple units. The faster the multiple units operate, the higher the requirements for the “health” status of the catenary.
In order to reduce potential safety hazards and improve operation level, AI robots have been introduced to high-speed railway lines to provide accurate catenary image data and handle potential safety hazards. This intelligent analysis system has undergone data testing, feedback, and correction of over 30 high-speed railways, over 40000 kilometers, and over 1.1 billion spare parts, forming a large database of OCS equipment defects. The automatic analysis capability includes 2160 types of defects and 514 types of spare parts for various types of high-speed railways, with an analysis efficiency of 200 kilometers per day.
With the help of a 4C catenary inspection vehicle, the main components, structures, and key positions of the catenary equipment are comprehensively and accurately imaged and captured, and then the image data is handed over to an “AI robot”, which can automatically identify and summarize equipment defects from a large amount of image data. This can improve the number and speed of defect detection, and also liberate analysts from image screening work to focus on defect distribution rules, defect cause investigation Defect rectification and tracking.
Currently, the 4C catenary inspection vehicles on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway collect up to 3 million device images per quarter. Taking 8000 images per person per day as an example, it takes 20 days for more than 20 people to work overtime to complete. With the support of “AI Robot”, it takes only two analysts 10 days to complete the analysis of the same 3 million images, increasing the efficiency by 20 times.