Interview: Alstom’s Business Development Director, Daniel Dunoye
Alstom’s Business Development Director, Daniel Dunoye says, “High speed rail has the ability to move large numbers of passengers quickly, safely and comfortably, while at the same time achieving this with minimum impact upon the environment.
“However, high speed rail projects require a high level of investment, especially in the supporting infrastructure.
“Typically, countries where this type of technology is already in use have strong centralised governments. In Australia the federal and state governments would need to look seriously at a project of this nature, not only from a financial perspective or from positions of self interest, but from the broader perspective of nation building.
“With Australia’s growing population and transport needs, I think the time is right for high speed rail in Australia.”
Alstom’s new AGV technology
In response to increased worldwide demand for high speed rail technology, Alstom has unveiled its next generation high speed train - the AGV - which is seen as the successor to our TGV trains that are widely used on high speed routes in Europe.
Alstom offers the AGV in configurations from seven to fourteen carriages, with a total of between 250 and 650 seats depending on the internal layout and number of carriages. The AGV’s commercial service speed will be 360 km/h (220 mph) with a design safer, more comfortable, more aerodynamic and costing less to maintain than previous designs.
Daniel Dunoye explains that the new AGV for the first time combines three key technologies; a distributed drive system; articulated carriage architecture; and synchronous permanent magnet motors.
“AGV is a new concept, in that there are no dedicated power cars at either end of the train and instead it has distributed traction throughout train with the motors located under the floor of the passenger carriages.
“Applying power through the wheels to the rails along the length of the train provides better efficiency through regulating the power-to-mass-ratio and means it is easier to add more cars to the train to increase capacity and greater operational flexibility without impacting on the speed or performance of the train.
“The AGV is articulated with one bogie between each car resulting in 20% fewer bogies than traditional trainsets, reducing overall mass and improving aerodynamic drag and stability when running at high speeds.
“By using fluid dynamics engineering tools we have also made improvements on aerodynamic drag to improve energy consumption which when combined with other improvements has shown the AGV consumes 30% less energy than previous TGV designs.”