A high-speed maglev vehicle has successfully conducted a test run with a speeds of up to 600 km/h (372 mph) on a maglev line at Tongji University in Shanghai. This marks a new important breakthrough in China's high-speed maglev research and development.
The development of a 600 km/h high-speed maglev transportation system is a key project in China's "Advanced Rail Transit" program initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology.
This is the maiden track run for the prototype since the launch of the project in July 2016.
The project team, with CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co., Ltd. responsible for the technical part, has involved experts from over 30 enterprises, universities and research institutes. They have broken through core technologies of the high-speed maglev series during the past four years, and enabled a test operation on track after ground debugging and static tests.
On the maglev test track, the prototype carried out the system joint debugging for the first time, and conducted the dynamic operation test under various working conditions.
"During the multi-condition test, the vehicle showed stable suspension guidance and a sound operation state. All key technical indicators met the design requirements and expectations," said Ding Sansan, head of the research and development team and deputy chief engineer of CRRC Qingdao Sifang.
The trial run saw improvements from static to dynamic operation, obtained a large number of key data, and preliminarily verified the key performance of the high-speed maglev system and core components, This has provided important technical support for the development and optimization of the follow-up high-speed maglev project test vehicles.
The high-speed maglev prototype system is expected to be rolled off the production line by the end of 2020.
