Title: Computational investigation and parametric design of high speed evacuated tube transportation

Authors: Arnav De; Sanket Sanjay Nangare; Sreeja Sadasivan; Senthil Kumar Arumugam; Bibin John; Zhang Yaoping

Addresses: School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, VIT Bhopal University, Bhopal, 466114, India ' School of Mechanical Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu, India ' Institute of Evacuated Tube Transport, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China

Abstract: Evacuated tube transportation is a path-breaking technology that can potentially supplant the current transportation technologies by offering high-speed transportation with maximum efficiency. Different scenarios were considered in which the train was simulated to be travelling at subsonic, transonic, and supersonic speeds at a fixed blockage ratio. It is found that no shockwaves are formed in the subsonic range, but they start forming at the rear end of the train from Mach number 0.8 onwards. From Mach 2, shockwaves start forming at the front end, along the length of the train as well as the rear end of the train. Further, multi-objective optimisation was conducted to evaluate the best combination of various influential factors. One of the salient conclusions of the present study is that the train with the oblique front end, elliptical rear end along with 1,000 Pa tube pressure gives the best combination, resulting in minimum drag.

Keywords: design of experiments; evacuated tube transportation; Mach number; aerodynamic drag; shockwave.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2023.128733

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2023 Vol.23 No.1, pp.13 - 23

Received: 14 Jun 2021
Accepted: 07 Nov 2021
Published online: 02 Feb 2023 *