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Give wings to China’s high-speed railways – Luo Jian, deputy chief engineer of Electrotechnical Institute of China Railway Design Group


Date:2018-11-21

                                                                                



From 1999 to 2003, Luo Jian majored in Mechanical Engineering and Automation at the School of Mechanical Engineering. From 2014 to 2017, he majored in Mechanical Design and Theory as a master's student. He is currently the deputy chief engineer of electrotechnical Institute of China Railway Design Group Co., Ltd. During his tenure, he won the 2017 Railway May Fourth Youth Medal, was selected as the first-level candidate for the “131” innovative talent training project in Tianjin in 2016 and became the Hundred Thousand-and-Ten thousand Talents Project top talents of China Railway Corporation in 2017. As the leader of the R&D team of China Railway Design Group Co., Ltd. and the four powers integration field, Luo Jian led a number of research projects at the departmental and bureau level, including the research and development of the contact network intelligent pre-matching platform research and development. Owing to his work, our high-speed rail broke the long-term technological monopoly of foreign parties and cracked the key technical problems in design and construction. He won 1 first prize, 1 second prize and 3 third prizes of provincial and ministerial level scientific and technological progress awards and won 9 provincial and ministerial excellent design awards. He presided over the preparation of Electrical Railway Contact Network Parts and many other railway and construction industry standards. He also presided over the preparation of the Electrical Railway Contact Network Design Manual and other industry guidance books and a number of general reference drawings. He made an important contribution to China's railway electrification construction.


“Like all poets who regard dreams as horses, I choose an eternal cause..." Luo Jian said.


Luo Jian's job is to design contact networks for railways and trains. Monotonous vocabulary and cumbersome calculations such as strut span, part load, and contact line sag are full of his lifeday after day. However, he always carries the beautiful dreams and pursuits of poetry, persists in the field of railway electrification design with sweat and passion, injects the beautiful youth into a roll of drawings and finally transforms into a volley erection. The contact net is like drawing a pair of wings for the high-speed rail to provide a steady stream of power for the running train.


"I hope that China's high-speed rail can fly safer and higher through our work!" Luo Jian said.


Since graduating from Southwest Jiaotong University in July 2003 to China Railway Design Group Co., Ltd., Luo Jian has been working here for 15 years. In the past 15 years, he has tried his best to go forward without fear and has become a young talent in the field of electrificsation design of China's railways from a trainee who is not a full-fledged professional. Looking back on the past, Luo Jian knows its taste in the midst of bitterness


Growing up in practice

The contact network facility is very important in the electrified railway. It is not only the main body of electrification engineering construction, but also a special form of transmission line for powering electric locomotives. It can be said that the contact net is the lifeline that directly guarantees the safety of high-speed rail operation.


However, How to do work on contact net design for Luo Jian who majored in machinery?


"My undergraduate degree is mechanical automation. Strictly speaking, there are some differences comparing with the current contact network. However, when considering that the contact network is a comprehensive and comprehensive subject, involving various fields of mechanics, materials, machinery and other professional knowledge, the Third Railway Survey and Design Institute Group Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of China Iron and Steel), the electrified power engineering design office contact network recruited some mechanical students at that time." Luo Jian believes that his major is not quite the same, but he learned a lot of public basic courses in the railway field and they could learn other knowledge by doing work. When he didn’t understand it, he would read books and ask others. By the first year of his work, he had made good use of the working gap to supplement a lot of theoretical knowledge of electrification.


At the end of 2003, the contact network department arranged for new staff to go to Baoji, a contact net parts manufacturing factory, to learn from the basic materials science. They lived and worked with the workshop workers.


It was very hard time during those days, especially in the winter, everyone was frozen and huddled into a ball every night, because dormitory was no heating. Recalling those days, he was most grateful that he had learned a lot of practical material foundation knowledge, which was very beneficial to the later design work. "As designers, we need to understand and learn a wide range of knowledge. As a designer, we need to understand that there is a wide range of knowledge to learn. Only by laying a solid foundation and firmly grasping many details of grass-roots work, can we have a clear idea, a basis and a foundation in drawing’’, he said.


After returning from Baoji, Luo Jian communicated with the director and expressed his hope to further increase the workload in March 2004. Therefore, Luo Jian was sent to Shanghai and followed by the project leader Chen Wei to do the specific design work of Metro Line 9 in April of that year. In the meantime, his systematic ideas, flexible thinking and solid basic skills in the design work have won the unanimous approval and praise of the project team members. Later, he participated in the specific design work of the electrification of the Gou (bangzi) hai (cheng) railway. There was a small incident that left a deep impression on Luo Jian in this project.


At that time, a technical person in charge of the design of the project contact network did not carefully calculate the clearance in the design of the contact network of a bridge across the railway. Instead, it was designed by experience alone. As the result, the technical person was severely criticized by the chief engineer of the electrification department at that time. This made Luo Jian deeply educated and did not dare to be sloppy in the future design work.


Due to the hard work and loving thinking in the work, Luo Jian was assigned a more important task in the design project of the railway (Tian)Jin-Qin(huangdao) -Shen (Yang) railway electrification transformation and designed sub-line in 2004. Luo Jian seized the opportunity to fully complete the design task. He made extremely accurate calculations for various complex geometries and was praised by the chief engineer of China Iron and Steele especially in the contact net design of one of the steel bridges. Since then, this energetic young man with his strong sense of responsibility and rigorous and meticulous work style has left a deep impression on others. So Luo Jian has more opportunities for exercise and a broader space for growth. He took on the special line for the Tianjin-Qinhuangdao guest project and began to undertake task by himself in October 2005.


Breakthrough in growth

As a special line member, Luo Jian shouldered tremendous responsibility in technology. In order to ensure the quality of the design, Luo Jian often surveyed the site with the field team and repeated measurement and confirmation of important work sites. Sometimes it takes dozens of kilometers to walk in one day. The Jin-Qin-Shen Railway passed through his hometown. He could see his home at a glance when he went online. However, because of his busy work, he has not returned home several times. In the event of an emergency at the construction site, Luo Jian would always rush to the scene to coordinate with the construction to solve various unexpected problems at the first time. In the construction of the contact network of a railway bridge across the Jin-Qin-Shen Railway in August 2005, due to the new site situation could not be reflected in time by outdated information of the field, the wrist arms on both sides of the bridge had already stood up when the construction party found that the clearance was not enough.


This situation has never been encountered before, the general treatment method is to install the support device suspension contact line at the bottom of the upper cross-road bridge. However, when they negotiated the design plan with the property owners of the highway bridge, the other party strongly disagreed and said coldly: "I don't care what you do, you can't touch my bridge anyway!"


The scene was in a stalemate. Luo Jian rushed to the scene in the first time and looked at it carefully. After repeated research and thought, he creatively proposed a clever special structural design: by adding two columns at the bottom of the bridge, horizontal support points are placed on the column to install the contact line. Because this new structural design is simple and easy, especially without involving third-party property rights, it not only solves the tough problems successfully, but also has been popularized and applied in the construction of railway contact nets under many road bridges.


Not only is he good at finding a breakthrough in his work, but Luo Jian’s ability to organize and coordinate has left a good reputation during this time. “When I was on the special line, I asked the designers to think about the construction site to the fullest extent, consider it comprehensively, take the initiative to be enthusiastic and timely in the construction process and do our best to provide more thoughtful and meticulous service for the construction party. Therefore, we had a good relationship with the construction party and cooperated with each other in those years." Luo Jian said, "Many people have become my friends although they rarely meet each other, we still have been maintaining contact."


In the past few years, Luo Jian's work performance has been highly accepted by the organization. Luo Jian was appointed as the deputy director of the Contact Network by the China Iron and Electricity Administration Office in July 2006, responsible for the management of technology and quality. He was appointed Director of the Contact Network on January 1, 2008. Many people questioned whether he could shoulder such a great responsibility at such a young age when the construction of domestic high-speed rails had just started at that time. As the only contact network design professional department in China Iron and Steel, the work of more than 30 people in the contact network institute represents the quality and image of the contact network design of China Railway. Luo Jian always believed that as long as he was willing to work hard, there were no difficulties. There were fewer people and weaker forces, but we should work hard. Under his leadership, the whole staff was twisted into a rope, stepping up learning and training, creating a living space, and organizing a strong team in a competitive market.  Not only did they complete the design tasks with good quality, but also Achieved breakthroughs and reached the lead in some areas.


Before 2010, the calculation of the wrist arm and suspension string pre-configuration of domestic high-speed railway contact network construction was monopolized by a few foreign companies. It is urgent for China's high-speed rail to develop a high-precision wrist arm and hoisting string pre-compliance calculation software with independent intellectual property rights.


Facing challenges and opportunities, in 2009, Luo Jian led the research and development team to seize the opportunity to work together with foreign parties. After more than one year of on-site research and exploration, dozens of pages of computational model derivation, hundreds of pages of software code writing, thousands of trials and trials as well as continuous comparison and comparison with the calculation results of foreign software, finally they developed advanced software with calculation accuracy no less than the foreign side and carried out practical verification in the Zhengzhou section of Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed rail. The research results are widely used in the design and construction fields, which make China's high-speed railway contact network computing and pre-matching key technologies break the monopoly of foreign technology, achieve complete autonomy, solve key technical problems in design and construction and improve production efficiency and the quality of engineering construction and operation. Over the past few years, this technology has created a total economic benefit of 150 million yuan and laid a solid foundation for four power’s technology to go to world.


Innovation in Breakthrough

Luo Jian worked for more than 10 years as a director of the Contact Network Institute and was known as the “young old cadre” from January 2008 to April 2017. Luo Jian was appointed as the deputy chief engineer of China Railway Design Institute of Telecommunications in April 2016, in charge of almost all national railway projects and urban rail transit projects outside the China Railway Harbin Bureau Group Co. Ltd and responsible for professional approval of more than 100 projects. Although the management work is getting heavier and involves a lot of energy, Luo Jian has never relaxed his business and technical study and has undertaken a series of scientific research projects. He has presided over the "Electrical Railway Contact Network Design Manual" and More than 20 general reference books such as the "contact net wrist arm installation map". He contracted and presided over the major research project of China Railway Corporation, such as New High-speed Railway Contact Network Equipment Technology Research, High-speed Rail 250km/h, 350km/h Contact Network Technology and Equipment Simplification Research, especially in 2015 and 2017. At present, the research results have been applied in Beijing-Shenyang high-speed rail. The results showed that the key performance indicators such as flexibility, smoothness and safety of the new simplified high-speed railway contact network system are better than the existing contact nets.


Luo Jian said that China's high-speed rail construction is booming by 2015, but our high-speed rail contact network technology is mainly from Germany, a small part imported from Japan and France, technical standards and parameters are not uniform and structure and form are almost no What has changed in many years and some parts of the contact network have also appeared to be "unacceptable". In this context, we believe that there should be innovation, it is necessary to propose our structure and standards and independently research and develop key technologies such as suspension, support, positioning and installation. Luo Jian’s idea was supported by the company. After the plan was submitted to China Railway Corporation, it was approved by the company.


At present, the new simplified high-speed railway contact network was a major scientific research and experimental project of China Railway Corporation. In addition to the comprehensive test of the Beijing-Shenyang high-speed railway arrangement, the railway head company was also preparing to expand the scope of test application.


The new high-speed railway contact network improved the level of equipment and service performance through unified parameters, unified structure and uniform materials and initially forms a Chinese standard contact network with complete system, reasonable structure and complete independent intellectual property rights and 22 patents were granted. The test data showed that the system was optimized, the structure was simple and the parts were integrated. The new contact net greatly improved the flow performance of the bow net. The structure was simple and reasonable, the number of parts was reduced by more than 30% and the installation and maintenance efficiency was increased by 30%. The components adopt hinged hoop, pin hinge, non-destructive crimping, precision forging and other structures, materials and innovative processes to improve the service performance and the life of the hanging string was three times. The new contact net was basically equivalent to the existing contact net manufacturing cost. Considering the factors such as the improvement of construction and maintenance efficiency and the improvement of service performance, the life cycle cost was lower and the economic and social benefits were remarkable.


The development speed and experimental application effect of the new simplified high-speed railway contact network exceeds Luo Jian's imagination. He is both gratified and pressured. He said that once the "China Standard" for contact network design is confirmed, it will definitely have a positive impact on the development of China's railway electrification profession. This day is getting closer!


The time is passing. With the beautiful dream of the railway four powers cause, Luo Jian has been advancing with the spirit of excellence and the spirit of innovation and hard work for 15 years. After attending the work, he published 13 papers, published 1 book, 6 industry codes, 40 patents, 7 provincial and ministerial science and technology awards and was selected as a talent of the “131” innovation in Tianjin in 2016. The first-level candidates for the talent training project and the top-notch talents of the 100 Million Talents project of the China Railway Corporation in 2017 won the 2017 Railway Youth May Fourth Medal. In the face of achievements and honors, Luo Jian calmly said that the road ahead was still very long, the dream was still far away, there were still many things to do.


Interview notes

Taking Dream as Horse and Never Lose time

It is the most simple and strong desire of Luo Jian since he joined the company, he worked hard for China's railway electrification industry and make the train run fast and safe. As the time went on, Luo Jian's heart remained unchanged and he persisted in moving forward. For 15 years, he has carefully designed every contact net of the railway and he has also carefully crafted his dreams. That dream is like a horse, carrying him to fly and gallop in his own world.


"The value of the contact network lies in the transmission of energy. The value of life lies in the struggle." Luo Jian said and did as well.


In the 15 years of work, he has never taken it lightly. He knows that the track is 6 meters above the sky, and in the "Zigzag" network structure, he has his responsibilities and dreams. The 15 years of struggle and responsibility have also contributed to Luo Jian’s achievements and glory today.


Never lose your heart, never waste your time and live up to your dreams, Luo Jian did it.