IITs and IISc join forces with HSRIC to develop new technologies for India's railway sector

The High-Speed Rail Innovation Centre (HSRIC), a division of the National High-Speed Rail Corporation, has initiated collaborative research projects with prestigious Indian academic institutions, including IITs and IISc, to develop indigenous solutions for the railway sector, with a particular focus on high-speed rail.

The 6th Advisory Council meeting of HSRIC recently convened in Delhi, chaired by Rajendra Prasad, Managing Director of NHSRCL (National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited). The meeting included prominent attendees such as the President of the Railway Technical Research Institute (Japan), faculty members from the University of Tokyo, and directors from IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai, IIT Kanpur, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Tirupati and IIT Kharagpur. 

Rajendra Prasad, Managing Director of NHSRCL, emphasized the significance of indigenous software development for the design and validation of traction and power supply systems. This collaboration with IISc Bangalore, IIT Bombay, and IIT Delhi is a pivotal step towards achieving the 'Make in India' initiative, reducing dependency on foreign software.

The ongoing research projects span two main domains: Civil Engineering and Electrical Engineering. These include the design of Reinforced Earth Structures for high-speed rail and railway applications, studies on Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) for high-speed railway tracks, optimization of high-speed railway viaduct designs, and simulation modeling for power supply and overhead electrification (OHE) designs.

In addition to development, teams from IITD, IISc, and IITB published a number of technical papers in the areas of traction power supply system and dynamic interaction of pantograph and catenary under the guidance of HSRIC in the years 2022–2023 in proceedings of the Vibration Engineering and Technology of Machinery Conference (VETOMAC) and IEEE Conferences.