Multibody Computational Tool for the Dynamic Analysis of Vehicle–Track Interaction

The importance of modelling and simulation has recently increased in the field of railway systems. The necessity for design, analysis and performance evaluation of the railway systems requires the use of advanced computational techniques that use fully nonlinear formulations which permit accurate modelling through capturing significant details of these systems. The paper presents a comprehensive computational approach employed in flexible simulation tool for the dynamic analysis of vehicle–track interaction based on multibody formulations. The novel numerical approach in the presented paper enables the study of different configurations of railway vehicles and various track combinations. The presented simulation tool was verified for the analysis of the Manchester Benchmark, and the results were compared with those obtained using different commercial simulation packages. The main objective of the comparison was to test and validate the implemented computational approach and the developed simulation tool to check its reliability and flexibility in the dynamic analysis of different railway systems.