TOWARDS A NEW GENERATION OF ACCURATE AND INTEGRATED RAILWAY VEHICLE SIMULATIONS

Abstract

This paper gives an overview of a part of the research work on railway vehicle system simulations done by the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) over the last years. The results of this work form a range of tools and methods which qualitatively increase the spectrum of phenomena that can be studied by simulation. This contributes to the general dramatic perfectioning process experienced in recent times by multibody and multiphysics simulation techniques. From the point of view of the application, existing wellestablished simulation environments have been used as a framework; it follows that the benefits due to the very high accuracy of the novel functionalities are accompanied by an high level of integration within established design and analysis processes.