Invited Paper Models And Tools For Simulation And Analysis Of Metrorail Transit Systems

The traffic and electrical analysis of a metrorail transit system may be successfully performed only by means of simulation tools; an analytical approach is in fact possible only introducing heavy simplifications due to the complexity and the mutual interaction of the phenomena, often non-linear, which determine the behaviour of the system. This is particularly true when the problems of determining a suitable schedule for the train traffic and of sizing the electrical network of an underground railway system are faced. In this paper two different simulators, that can be used to analyze the feasibility and the quality of the solutions to the above two problems, are presented. The first one is a stochastic event-driven simulator which allows the performance analysis of a given schedule and is able to represent the system kinematics and the safety constraints; the second one is an integrated system simulator which allows the electrical analysis of the network during the movement of the trains along the track.