RTCONTACT: An Efficient Wheel-Rail Contact Algorithm for Real-Time Dynamic Simulations

Determination of contact forces exchanged between wheel and rail is one of the most important topics in railway dynamics. Recent studies are oriented to improve the existing contact methods in terms of computational efficiency on one side and on the other side to develop more complex and precise representation of the contact problem. This work shows some new results of the contact code developed at Politecnico di Torino identified as RTCONTACT; this code, which is an improvement of the CONPOL algorithm, is the result of long term activities, early versions were used in conjunction with MBS codes or in Matlab® environment to simulate vehicle behaviour. The code has been improved also using experimental tests performed on a scaled roller-rig. More recently the contact model was improved in order to obtain a higher computational efficiency that is a required for the use inside of a Real Time process. Benefit of a Real Time contact algorithm is the possibility to use complex simulation models in diagnostic or control systems in order to improve their performances. This work shows several comparisons of the RTCONTACT contact code respect commercial codes, standards and benchmark results