Simulation of Railway Vehicles: Necessities and Applications

Abstract

During recent years the computational simulation of a railway vehicle’s running behaviour has grown to a kind of standard design task in railways industry. Well qualified for this kind of computational process are software tools for the simulation of general mechanics and mechatronics systems basing on a multibody system approach. Bur for their effective application on arbitrary wheel-rail systems a couple of specific modelling features have to be available additionally, of which an efficient modelling of a steel wheel being in contact with a steel rail is the most important one. The paper gives a short insight into the modelling of railways vehicles with the focus concentrating on a generally applicable wheel-rail contact module. The basic principles of this module are a so-called quasi-elastic contact model together with a description of the wheel-rail interface as a kinematic constraint. As specific application case, the demanding simulation of a railway vehicle running through a switch is presented.