A calculation of predicting the expected life of super-capacitor following current pattern of railway vehicles

Recently it is widely conducted about the usage of regenerative energy produced during brake periods of railway vehicles. The storage system for regenerative energy using super-capacitor (EDLC:Electric Double Layer Capacitor) is one of those research areas. In the storage systems of the regenerative energy, super-capacitor (EDLC) is used for storage device of modular energy. It is critical to estimate the proper replacement moment for the existed super-capacitor (EDLC) due to the safety of the system. However, there is no standard method to predict the expected life of super-capacitor (EDLC). In this paper, therefore, we propose the method to estimate expected life of super-capacitor by evaluating of internal heating which caused by regenerative current pattern of railway vehicles. With that, we improve the reliability of whole system. Furthermore, it is also addressed to prove that our research is reasonable.