The running gears of DLR's long-term project Next Generation Train utilize independently rotating wheels with mechatronic track guidance, direct drives close to the wheels and are optimized for low weight. On the basis of encouraging research results so far, DLR decided to design and build a true scale prototype of the NGT running gear and use it as a research facility. It is the intention to improve, validate and demonstrate the mechanical and mechatronic design, sensor and actuator lay-out step by step and finally approach the Technology Readiness Level 6. By the end of 2022, this prototype will be put into operation considering low speed scenarios up to max. 5 m/s at an in-house integration test rig. This is the current task, which is reported on in the paper. However, this work is supposed to prepare advanced performance experiments up to 350 km/h on external roller rigs and at railway test tracks later on.
For the reliable simulation-based fatigue design of railway vehicles, the operation conditions and resulting loads over the lifespan of the vehicle have to be considered. After introducing the relevant fatigue loads on the vehicle and the methods for modelling the fatigue damage, this work aims at analysing the influence of the operating conditions and loads on the damage using sensitivity analysis. Two approaches are studied: the variance-based sensitivity analysis of the loads acting on the car body and the influence of different operating conditions using statistical values per track section. The loads are obtained from multi-body simulations and the damage is estimated using both physical FE-models and meta-models. The performances of linear regression models and polynomial chaos models are evaluated. The proposed sensitivity analysis is applied to the highspeed train being developed in the Next Generation Train (NGT) project at DLR and will serve as a basis for the virtual design and reliability analysis.
The newly released commercial DLR RailwayDynamics Library is intended to support the design, optimization and control development as well as hardware-and software-inthe-loop testing of railway vehicles mainly on the system level. To this aim, it provides the capability to consider vehicle dynamics issues such as traction, comfort and safety in multi-domain engineering tasks by preparation of vehicle, track, wheel-rail contact models and roller rig scenarios on different levels of detail. Exploiting several precursor papers on specific railway modeling topics, their models have been collected and reorganized in order to propose a sound modeling framework dedicated to railway dynamics. The paper gives an overview on particular concepts and ideas of the library, presents several application examples and discusses two approaches to organize multi-domain modeling.
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