DC railway power network solutions by diakoptics

The paper is concerned with the application of diakoptics to DC railway power network solutions for a railway system simulator. The technique of diakoptics involves tearing of a given system into a number of independent parts, then putting the solutions of the divided parts together to form the solution of the original problem. This is particularly appropriate to the solution of railway power supply networks as they are characterised by sections of essentially ladder-type networks infrequently cross-connected. Furthermore, the subnetworks themselves are slowly-evolving due to the existence of moving branches representing the trains. Thus, coupled with sparse matrix techniques, the approach can lead to highly efficient solution of complex railway power networks