Overview on the DLR RailwayDynamics Library

Abstract

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.

On the modelling of the friction characteristics of railway vehicle brakes

“…Thus, time-consuming and costly experiments can be enriched by a large number of virtual tests to improve the estimation of the system behavior and to shorten approval procedures. This includes the analysis of entire vehicle dynamics during braking, as presented in [22].…”

Calibration and validation of fatigue design models for railway car bodies considering uncertainty

“…The resulting loads on the car body can be determined either from measurements or simulations. At DLR, multibody system simulations of the vehicle dynamics 9 and CFD simulations for the determination of pressure profiles in tunnels and during train encounters 23 were carried out for the NGT. MBS models in Simpack 24 are available for the middle car, the end car, and a shortened train of the NGT High Speed Train (HST).…”

“…7,8 In this work, performed within the DLR project Sim-baCon aiming at a simulation-based design and certification of vehicles, the calibration and validation process is applied to the car body structure of the Next Generation Train (NGT). 9,10 The simulation of the fatigue life span of the car body structure requires a complex modeling chain including the modeling of the track geometry as main source for loads, the dynamic reactions of the vehicle running on the track, the structural loads due to the vehicle dynamics, and the resulting fatigue life span. To ensure reliable simulation results, the calibration of numerous model parameters is required in all steps of the chain including track geometry parameters, vehicle suspension parameters, and structural parameters, in particular welds where damages appear.…”