Technical Paper
Computer-Based Modeling and Simulation for Vehicle Rail Shipping Impact Analysis
1996-02-01
960520
A general methodology is presented which can be used to generate computer based models for simulating the transient response of vehicle systems. The vehicle rail shipping impact analysis has been conducted by using the presented methodology. A system topology of the vehicle model is represented by the graphical representation. The system model is composed of rigid bodies, nonlinear bushing joints and may closed kinematic loops. The formulation and solution of vehicle system equations is often difficult and expensive because of the large number of algebraic constraints and dependent variables. The modeling and simulation procedures reveals that substantial algorithm simplicity and computational efficiency can be achieved by taking advantage of system topology, matrix methods and other numerical techniques to effectively eliminate excess equations and variables.