Keywords: brake system, brake disc, brake pad, friction coefficient, brake distance, earthquake, full-service brake.

This paper reports on the technology of Tokaido-Shinkansen to ensure safety during an earthquake. The brake system of Shinkansen has been designed based on technology and knowledge acquired from many years of operating experience and is thus, very reliable. With the recent severe earthquakes in Japan, enhancing safety measures for earthquakes has become one of the urgent issues throughout the industry. There are various ways of enhancing passenger safety. This paper describes the technology to stop the running train quickly in a short distance.

When optimizing brake performance, both hardware and software design is important. From the hardware point of view, the structures and materials of the brake disc and brake pad need to be considered. While, from the software standpoint, sharing the rate of brake force within the train, and wheel slide/adhesion control characteristic need to be considered. It has been confirmed through running tests using the new brake technology that the stopping distance was shorter by more than five percent than the expected value, requiring further analysis to fully understand the phenomenon. This paper describes the technical development of the new brake system and its testing results.

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