National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) has formed a High Speed Rail Innovation Centre Trust to undertake targeted, applied collaborative research to solve issues raised by rail industry to enhance railway safety, reliability, productivity, efficiency & sustainability ensuring customer satisfaction.
The trust will also leverage Indian technical capabilities and develop indigenous capabilities in relevant fields of High Speed Railways to develop professional expertise in all aspects of High Speed Railways so as to provide innovative, indigenous, cost effective solutions, technological guidance, strategic analysis, advice to the Indian Rail Transportation industry on significant challenges & opportunities and provide eco-friendly & environmentally sustainable solutions. It will also contribute to development of HSR specific standards in India.
HSR Innovation Centre is managed by a Board of Trustees Chaired by Managing Director, NHSRCL and supported by Executive Council, which is assisted by the Advisory Council to review nature of the projects to be undertaken by the Innovation Centre. The Advisory council may include persons of eminence from industry, academia and research institutes both from India and abroad like IITs, University of Tokyo, DRDO, ISRO, JR East etc. The trust will adopt a collaborative approach for Funding, execution of research projects etc.
At present, the Innovation Centre Trust is considering research on following projects:
1.Application software based systems for future HSR: Presently all railway transport & maintenance management software are imported, which takes up lot of resources (time and money) for any project. Indigenous software models would save resources and help in economically studying design improvements under Indian conditions.
2.Indigenous simulation model for design validation of power supply system: All traction power supply and OHE design validation in India are carried out abroad by outsourcing to European companies or Japanese organisations. Source code remains with these companies and any modifications or redesign which involves running the modified simulation program again, takes up more time and cost. Indigenous simulation software models would save time and money and help economically studying design improvements.
3.Economical Civil Engineering (reinforced Earth retaining wall & earth abutments): The reinforced earth structures reduces the land requirement for projects, they are better for earthquake resistance and heavy rains besides being cost effective as compared to viaduct. Reinforced earth retaining walls and abutments are used in Highways in India and not for Railways. On MAHSR these structures are planned to be used on Japanese Shinkansen experience. Japanese specifications and standards will be used for design and construction. NHSRCL officials are understanding the system used in Japan, which would be helpful in developing design methods and specifications to suit Indian conditions and available reinforcement material in India.
4.Development of indigenous maintenance simulator for Rolling Stock: The maintenance simulator for rolling stock will be equipped with the fault creation, diagnosis and troubleshooting for all the critical systems/ sub systems of the MAHSR train set like door system, brake, passenger announcement and passenger information system, rolling stock system integration and interface with the signalling and telecommunication etc. The Innovation Centre trust will facilitate the research to develop such simulators indigenously. The first meeting of the trust was held today in IIT, Mumbai, where Prof. Sudhir Jain, Director & Professor (Civil engineering), IIT Gandhi Nagar, Prof. K.N. Satyanarayana, Director & Professor (Civil Engineering), IIT Tirupati, Prof K.V. Krishna Rao, Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Mumbai, Prof R. David Koilpillai, Pro. Department of Electrical Engineering IIT Madras (Chennai), Prof Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director and professor, Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, Prof KE Seetha Ram, Visiting professor at the centre for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo, Japan, Shri Achal Khare, Managing Director, NHSRCL, Dr. Masaru Tateyama, General Director, Research and Development Promotion Division, Railway Technical Research Institute, Japan and Mr. Yasushi Ujita, Deputy General Director, International Division, Railway Technical Research Institute, Japan along with industry and Japanese experts deliberated on the issues concerning innovations in various aspects of HSR building in India. Sushma Gaur Additional General Manager Corporate Communications National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd Asia Bhawan, Second Floor, Road No. 205, Sector- 9, Dwarka, New Delhi