A Digital Real-Time Simulator for Rail-Vehicle Control System Testing

Modern electrical locomotives are powered by controlled power converters. Integration testing of the vehicle control system is performed using real-time simulation. The present contribution presents an evaluation of a digital real-time simulator for this purpose, with particular emphasis on switching and events, which is one of the more demanding tasks in the real-time simulation of hybrid systems. A pragmatic solution to the difficult problem of simulating hybrid systems in real-time is proposed.