Title: Virtual prototyping: the future way of designing railway vehicles

Authors: G. Schupp, A. Jaschinksi

Addresses: Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt, Institute for Robotics and System Dynamics, D-82234 Wessling, Germany. Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt, Institute for Robotics and System Dynamics, D-82234 Wessling, Germany

Abstract: Virtual prototyping represents an important way for cost and time efficient design of future railway vehicles. SIMPACK, as a universally applicable simulation software for mechanical and mechatronic systems based on a multibody systems approach and providing the system engineer with powerful bi-directional interfaces to established computer-aided engineering software, serves as a reliable and efficient tool for this process. A comprehensive general wheel-rail module extends the software to the entire range of railway vehicles. Besides a short general description including the use of its interfaces, the emphasis is laid upon the contact modelling between wheel and rail for which a recently developed quasi-elastic contact model is applied. Two complex industrial simulation tasks from the field of advanced railway technology demonstrate the concurrent co-operation of all these features.

Keywords: simulation; railway vehicle dynamics; virtual prototyping; multibody systems; mechatronic systems; wheel-rail contact; creepage control; tilting technique.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.1999.001861

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 1999 Vol.22 No.1/2, pp.93-115

Published online: 18 Aug 2003 *

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