Contact patch animation window

UM Loco includes special program tools, which increase the effectiveness of the simulation of railway vehicle dynamics. The contact animation window allows a designer a possibility to observe features of the wheel-rail geometry and forces in the contact patch, determine if the contact is one-point or double-point one, observe the dynamic behavior of wheelsets in curves and so on. This is a very useful tool for the determination of the critical velocity of a railway vehicle, studying features of the interaction between wheels and rails, observing wheel climb and derailment situations.

The solution of the tangent contact problem is shown in the special tool. This window shows contact patches, creep forces, distribution of the creep forces, sliding and adhesion areas during the simulation process.

There is a tool for the description of wheel and rail profiles. Profiles are described as a set of key points, which are interconnected with the help of line, arcs of circle, splines and beta-splines.

A special tool for creation of track irregularities is included in UM Loco. It supports pointwise input of irregularities, import of measured irregularities and realization of random processes according to the given spectrum density.

Contact animation window

The subsystem technique is a base of the simulation of complex models with many degrees of freedom as well as standard and regular objects, for example, a train. It needs to describe models of a locomotive and a wagon and then copy the wagon model as a subsystem as many as necessary.