Railroad Simulation Implementation

In 2012 our railway customer, a major player in the field of railway signaling and integrated transport systems, contracted PSA for a Railroad Simulation Implementation project. The activities were focused directly on the system implementation and its update. 

The primary objective for the Simulation Implementation project was to develop a simulation environment imitating different railroad objects. This would allow for the testing of a digital twin of a heavy rail Computer-Aided Dispatching system and for dispatcher training. Railroad objects being simulated included moving trains, field equipment (such as signal lamps), switches, tracks, and various devices which can be controlled or commanded by the user or system. One of the special features developed was an internal clock that can either accelerate or decelerate time allowing greater control over the simulation environment.

On the basis of the initial information provided by the customer, PSA created digital models of the simulated objects on built-in software, verified their properties and validated the correspondence between the simulated and real objects. The simulated objects were successfully integrated into the digital twin system.

The Simulation module was isolated from the production dispatching system through separate hardware and software port isolation. The Simulation system was a scaled down dispatching system that was capable of running all of the production software, but with fewer requirements on simultaneous users, long-term data storage, and system availability. 

• Functional requirements review.
• Design documents creation.
• Implementation.
• Unit-testing.
• Test case definition.
• Functional testing.