Mr. Daisuke Hijikata, Railway Technical Research Institute (RTRI), JAPAN

Verification using simulation is actively used in the performance evaluation of the Wheel Slide Protection (WSP) system of railway vehicles. This is because low adhesion conditions are required to evaluate the performance of the WSP system, and the simulation can effectively reproduce intentional low adhesion conditions. The importance of performance evaluation with the track tests remains unchanged as the final step of verification procedures, but the effect of reducing the number of costly and laborious tests is significant.

However, this method is based on the premise that the simulation always performs the same stable operation, and there has been no discussion about the uncertainty such as variation and deterioration of the performance of real vehicles. If these uncertainties can be taken into consideration, it should lead to a more detailed evaluation of the WSP performance.

Therefore, in this study, we introduced some influential factors into the simulation and comprehended the influence of these changes on the WSP performance. In addition, we defined the strength of the influence of each influential factor as the degree of influence and compared these. This makes possible to obtain knowledge on how the WSP performance changes according to the given conditions.

By utilizing this study, the research and development of the WSP system would be streamlined, and it would contribute to the improvement of the safety and reliability of railway vehicles.