Keywords: virtual certification, multi-physics simulation, variability, data management.

The approval process of new rolling stock is essentially based on inline testing campaign. Beyond the cost of these tests, the slowness of the approval process penalizes the development of the railway industry. This paper presents the virtual certification for the catenary-pantograph interaction. This project, called CVI-CaP, is a partnership between CIMES and SNCF Réseau. The main objective of this project is to develop a platform which reduces the number of inline tests and hence the time to market for new rolling stock.

The virtual certification project is divided into several stages:

1. Dynamic simulations of the pantograph-catenary interaction including variability analysis,
2. Feasibility of the virtual certification platform including process automation, data management and artificial intelligence,
3. Evaluation of aerodynamic effects of the pantograph for the current collection quality with CFD simulations,
4. Evaluation of high frequency behaviour of the pantograph with multi-body simulations,
5. Modelling current collection and electric arcs with electromagnetic simulations.

The virtual certification involves inline testing campaign, tests on laboratory bench-testing and multi-physics simulations. Multi-physics simulations help to reduce the gap between test and simulation. Machine learning technology is applied to convert the amount of data into valuable knowledge (detection of critical configurations, correlation between test and simulation, variability analysis).

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