With VI-Rail engineers accurately model complete railway vehicles, then realistically simulate their design's behavior in motion. This lets users study refine, and optimize railcar performance - all virtually, before running physical tests. Using VI-Rail - the specialized railcar simulation software from VI-Grade, an engineering team can quickly build a complete, parameterized model of a new railway vehicle, easily defining its suspension, wheelset, wheel-rail contact, and other vital characteristics. Then without leaving their engineering workstation, the team's members can run the model through a battery of cinematic simulations. They use these tests to determine the vehicle's stability, derailment safety clearance, track load, passenger comfort, and more. The performance of a railcar design can be optimized virtually with in a computer, before cutting a single piece of metal or running a single physical test.

What used to take weeks, months, or years to physically model and test can now be done in just hours with VI-Rail. Users can quickly explore hundreds or even thousands of design variations, testing and refining their designs until optimizing railcar performance

Fast "What-if" Simulations
Simulation gives users immediate answers to their engineering questions. They quickly see and understand how any kind of design change will affect vehicle performance. VI- Rail is built upon the MSC.Software product MSC.Adams (Automatic Dynamic Analysis of Mechanical Systems), widely recognized as the world's leading mechanical system simulation tool.

VI-Rail extends users' ability to:

• Quickly build, test, and refine railcar designs, exploring many "what-if" alternatives. A user can, for example, change springs with only a few mouse clicks, instead of having to wait for a mechanic to install new springs, as required with physical testing.
• Easily vary the kinds of analyses being performed. With simulation, there's no need to modify physical instrumentation, test fixtures, and test procedures.
• Work in a secure testing environment, without fear of losing critical data to instrument failure or falling behind schedule due to poor weather condition for testing.

VI-Rail users can instantly see the effects of design changes on railcar performance in high-speed animation. They can easily detect component interferences, excessive wear, instability, and performance limitations. Users can also plot key parameters in graphs to compare results from different designs.

VI- Rail Highlights
Complete Simulation Solution

• Component-level
• Subsystem-level
• System-level

Contact Elements

• Linear
• Tabular (nonlinear with precomputed contact geometry)
• General (nonlinear with online calculation of contact geometry)

Virtual Modeling

• Hierarchical structure
• Interactive in both standard-user and template-builder modes

File-Based Modeling

• Through subsystem files
• Through property files

Database

• Derived from ADAMS/Car
• Proven and commonly used

Easy Customization

• Through open architecture
• Through dialog-box builder

VI-Rail锟斤拷s user interface is designed specifically for railcar simulation. Menu selections highlight functions already familiar to rail engineers, so they can quickly become proficient with the software. VI-Rail can be further customized to support unique modeling and simulation approaches.

VI-Rail Applications

• Dynamic simulation of wheel-rail contact
• Suspension design
• Wear prediction
• Creep analysis
• Coupler design
• Bogie analysis
• Track loads prediction
• Simulation of cargo tie-down effectiveness
• Design of material handling equipment
• Design and simulation of auxiliary equipment
• Event reconstruction

Two User Modes for Vehicle, Track, and Contact Modeling
VI-Rail users select from two operational modes:

• A standard interface, which allows users to enter data into existing design templates to run both standard and custom design tests; and
• Template-builder mode, enabling experienced users to create their own design templates from libraries of core and user-defined modeling elements.

Easy CAD/CAE Integration
VI-Rail users can also integrate applications with their existing engineering processes. Two-way interfaces let them freely exchange data with their preferred CAD, finite element analysis, and control system design packages. The result, is a complete virtual prototyping environment for building and testing railway vehicle designs. Users not only save time and money by reducing the need for physical testing, they also produce better designs because they can quickly optimize system performance on the computer.