• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5877-5884
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• 2014

Recently, abnormally cold weather has been reported more frequently in winter due to the climate change and abnormal weather changes. On the other hand, the heating capacity of a railcar may be not enough to warm the cabin under severe cold climatic conditions, which is one of the reasons for the passengers' complaints about heating. In this study, the effects of ambient temperature and heater power on the cabin temperature was investigated to obtain the minimum ambient temperature for the tested railcar. The test railcar was placed in a large-climatic chamber, and various ambient temperature conditions were simulated. The effects of the heater output were investigated by monitoring the cabin temperature under a range of heater output conditions. The mean cabin temperature was $14.0^{\circ}C$, which was far lower than the required minimum temperature of $18^{\circ}C$, under a $-10^{\circ}C$ ambient temperature condition with the maximum heat power. When the ambient temperature was set to $0^{\circ}C$ and $10^{\circ}C$, the maximum achievable cabin temperature was $26.1^{\circ}C$ and $34.0^{\circ}C$. Through calculations using the interpolation method, the minimum ambient temperature to maintain an $18^{\circ}C$ cabin temperature was $-6.7^{\circ}C$ for this car. The vertical temperature difference was higher with a higher power output and higher ambient temperature. The maximum vertical temperature difference was higher than $10^{\circ}C$ in some cases. However, the horizontal temperature difference vs. low temperature (< $2^{\circ}C$) was independent of the power output and ambient temperature. As a result, it is very important to reduce the vertical temperature difference to achieve good heating performance.