Aerodynamic design of the 600 km/h high-speed maglev transportation system

After several generations of technological innovation and development, China's rail transit has made remarkable achievements. The adhesion of the wheel rail system limits the further high-speed development of rail transit, and the application of the maglev technology in rail transit arises at the historic moment. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China began to develop the high-speed maglev transportation system with a speed of 600 km/h. The operational speed of the high-speed maglev train is 600 km/h and the Mach number reaches 0.49, and the aerodynamic performance of the train deteriorates sharply. Due to the change of the operational environment (train-rail gap, throttling on both sides) of the high-speed maglev train, the aerodynamic characteristics of the high-speed maglev train are different from that of the high-speed wheel-rail train. The aerodynamic problem has become one of the key issues in the design and development of the high-speed maglev train. In the present paper, the technical challenges faced by the aerodynamic design of the high-speed maglev train are discussed, and the solutions of the aerodynamic design of the high-speed maglev train are proposed. Then the aerodynamic design schemes of the China’s 600 km/h high-speed maglev train are introduced, and the future research fields of aerodynamics of the high-speed maglev train are prospected.