ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter presented several three-dimensional formulations for solving the wheel/rail contact problem. These formulations, as demonstrated in this chapter, can be implemented in general multibody system computer algorithms that are designed to solve a system of differential and algebraic equations. In railroad dynamics, the multibody vehicle model can have an arbitrary number of bodies whose motions are subjected to kinematic constraints in addition to the wheel/rail contact elements. Therefore, it is important to discuss the general computational multibody algorithms before discussing the implementation of the special wheel/rail contact elements in these algorithms. Consequently, the first section of this chapter focuses on the structure of the multibody system computational algorithms and the numerical procedures that can be used to develop a general-purpose multibody system computer code.
