Real-time test bench for traction drives controllers

The Council Directive 95/18/EEC stated that the European State members should establish Notified Bodies which certify the accordance with the Interoperability Technical Specifications of all components and systems of the European railway network. The Italian State is going to notify the Italian Transport Agency and in this expectation the Italian State Railway FS, the Milan Polytechnic and other Universities decided to coordinate their structures in order to organize a Laboratory Network to certify and to promote new test facilities. This work is part of this development: it proposes a real time test bench for drive controllers to test the traction and braking performance considered in the pr.EN50215 before the entry into service and without any hardware connection of the controller to the drive as all the mobility system is modeled into the test bench by proper system equations. This paper presents the informatic structure of the test bench and its dynamical performance as measured coupling the device to an industrial controller.