A Comprehensive DC Railway Traction System Simulator Based on ‎MATLAB: Tabriz Line 2 Metro Project Case Study

As a result of rapid global urbanization, energy and environmental sustainability are becoming ‎increasingly significant. According to the Rail Transport and Environment Report published by ‎the International Union of Railways in 2015, energy used in the transportation sector accounts ‎for approximately 32% of final energy consumption in the EU. Railway, representing over 8.5% ‎of the total traffic in volume, shares less than 2% of the transport energy consumption. Railway ‎plays an important role in reducing energy usage and CO2 emissions, compared with other ‎transport modes such as road transport. However, despite the inherent efficiency, the energy ‎used by the rail industry is still high, making the study of railway energy efficiency of global ‎importance. Therefore, in this paper, the development of the comprehensive simulator software ‎for DC-fed railway systems is demonstrated.  In the proposed MATLAB based software, the ‎train movement model and railway power network model are integrated into the simulator. This ‎energy simulator can calculate the energy flow of the whole system according to multiple-train ‎driving controls and timetables. Finally, the results of simulations for a standard Railway ‎system are compared to valid references.‎