Computational models

Accurate and efficient vehicles, railway track, coupled vehicle-flexible track dynamics and wheel-rail contact are modelled using Multibody Dynamic techniques. Two in-house simulation codes are available:

SIMULON-RAIL: ▪ Long distance simulation of rail vehicles on tracks with arbitrary geometry.
▪ Simulation of track flexibility with Moving Modes Method.
▪ Stability analysis, curving behavior.
▪ Wheel-rail contact with Knife-Edge Equivalent profiles.

SIMPLE-RAIL: ▪ Simplified model with weakly coupled vertical and lateral dynamics.
▪ Designed for on-board observation of vehicle dynamics.
▪ Real-time capable.

Experiments

A scaled track with straight, curved and transition sections, and different vehicles are used in the experiments. Measuring the trak geometry, understanding the vehicle dynamics, estimating the contact forces, measuring rail corrugation and dynamics of vehicles on bridge are some of the outputs from these experiments.

Validation

Computational method are experimentally validated.