Autonomous Determination of Pneumatic Parameters of Traindy

TrainDy is the UIC certified software for Longitudinal Train Dynamics (LTD) computation of freight trains. It has been certified after an identification process that has mapped the main pneumatic devices equipping the European freight trains. This identification process has been “manual” (i.e. neither autonomous or automatic) and based on an Experts evaluation to assess its correctness. Such “modus operandi” is not suitable when there is the need for an identification of new devices by a “normal user”. The paper shows the results of an automatic determination process of all pneumatic parameters of TrainDy software in order to have the best matching between experimental measurements and numerical results of three different testing conditions of a 500 m freight train. This determination has been carried out by employing MATLAB and ModeFRONTIER. Results show that the determination process followed by the Expert Group, i.e. identify firstly the pressure in brake pipe, then the pressure in brake cylinder and then compute Longitudinal Forces is not suitable for an automatic determination process, where it is more convenient to optimize all types of tests at the same time.