Modelica library for the systems engineering of railway brakes Marc Ehret Institute of System Dynamics and Control, German Aerospace Center, Germany,
[email protected] Abstract content of electronic and software components, systems engineering has become a wide spread and important pro- This work outlines the role of system simulation for the cedure in product development (INCOSE, 2015). development process of railway brakes. The principles of In the context of systems engineering, computer based systems engineering motivate the use of computer based system simulation is a powerful tool since it supports de- simulation in order to enhance the understanding of sys- signers to understand the behavior of systems in design tems and to verify the behavior of systems in early de- stages where an experimental analysis is not feasible. Fur- sign phases. For this reason, the Modelica library "Vir- thermore, it allows engineers to check their own thinking, tual Train Brakes" is presented which enables engineers to to analyze alternatives and capabilities of the system and generate simulation models of railway brakes and to per- to communicate their concept to others (INCOSE, 2015) form system simulations during different phases of the de- (Mittal et al., 2017). Modelica is a well suitable modeling velopment process. By modeling and simulating the brake language to generate models of multi-physical technical systems of a passenger and a freight train, the capability of systems, such as railway brake systems and to study their the library is demonstrated and further investigations are physical behavior. motivated. Keywords: Railway Brakes, Systems Engineering, Multi- The goal of this work is to develop the concept of a Level Models, Variant Models, Generic Models Modelica library which provides an environment for the application of system simulation throughout the entire de- 1 Introduction velopment process of railway brakes.