Numerical investigation of optimum insulation thickness to increase energy efficiency in railway vehicles

The energy efficiency is one of the hot topic in transportation across the World due to the energy crisis emerges in last decades. Furthermore, the rising environmental concern leads the researchers to improve the recent systems in order to descend the energy consumption which would help the reduction of CO2 release during operation. Rail transportation has an unavoidable role in passenger transportation all around the World. And HVAC has a major importance for a comfort ride for the passengers during their travel. It solely consumes almost %30 of the total energy per travel in railways. In this particular work, the effect of the thickness and type of insulation material which is used to reduce the heat loss of the passenger cars in rail transportation was investigated. In order to examine the train envelope, the structure was modeled by dividing it into sections. The specified sections are formed in different insulation material thicknesses. A parametric analysis was made by defining the types of insulation materials. In order to see the effect of the train envelope on energy consumption, the analyzes were evaluated at different temperatures in summer and winter conditions. ANSYS, a commercial software, was used for the analysis.