Modelling and simulation of railway cable systems

Mathematical models and numerical methods for the computation of both static equilibria and dynamic oscillations of railroad catenaries are derived and analyzed. These cable systems form a complex network of string and beam elements and lead to coupled partial differential equations in space and time where constraints and corresponding Lagrange multipliers express the interaction between carrier, contact wire, and pantograph head. For computing static equlibria, three different algorithms are presented and compared, while the dynamic case is treated by a finite element method in space, combined with stabilized time integration of the resulting differential algebraic system. Simulation examples based on reference data from industry illustrate the potential of such computational tools. (c) 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.