Simulation of railway brake plants: An application to SAADKMS freight wagons

Abstract

The UIC railway braking system is a complex pneumatic plant whose performance and reliability are safety relevant. The plant is controlled by the transmission of pneumatic signals; different train compositions involve large parametric variations of plant response. The problem is critical for long freight trains where the delayed plant response involves heavy longitudinal forces between vehicles. Even for simple compositions of 10—15 vehicles, the number of components involved in the plant response is quite high. The distributor valve, a complex pneumo-mechanic device, is devoted to control the brake response on every vehicle and it is perhaps the most difficult component to be simulated. Authors have developed simulation models of the pneumatic plant of the UIC railway brake including libraries of pneumatic submodels that can be parametrically calibrated in order to reproduce different train compositions. In this work, a case study concerning the simulation of a convoy composed by the SAADKMS freight wagon is presented. Simulation results are compared with experimental data kindly supplied by Trenitalia SPA. Model formulation and calibration procedures are shown in order to explain the followed workflow.