Simulation study on adhesion control of electric locomotives based on multidisciplinary virtual prototyping

An electric locomotive is a complex electromechanical system composed of electro-magnetic, power electronics, mechanics and various control subsystems. The interactions between the different subsystems have to be considered when the adhesion control system is studied. The multi-body model of an electric locomotive was established with ADAMS (automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical systems). A hybrid adhesion control algorithm was designed using MATLAB. The multidisciplinary virtual prototyping of the locomotives was established with co-simulation of different simulation tools. The simulation results show that the hybrid adhesion controller can suppress wheel-to-rail slipping efficiently and some design problems may be solved with the multidisciplinary virtual prototyping. This approach provides a new and effective way to study more sophisticated adhesion control system further.