Keywords: high-speed train, Fluent, European Technical Specification for Interoperability, computational fluid dynamics, railways.

In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics methodology to simulate the aerodynamic loads of a high-speed train following the European Technical Specification Directive 96/48/EC has been developed. It is focused on the section "Train aerodynamic loads in open air", analysing the first three sections: aerodynamic loads on track workers at the lineside; aerodynamic loads on passengers on a platform; and pressure loads in the open air.

A TGV Duplex model has been used in the study, presented in this paper, analysing an interval of time starting 1 second before and finishing 10 seconds after the passage of the train.

A fine structured mesh aligned with the flow was created with a y plus between 30 and 300, being solved with k-epsilon realizable model using standard wall functions. The software used for this purpose was Ansys Fluent and the simulations have been performed on a cluster of Intel ® Xeon ® Quad -Core E5530 2.4 GHz processors.

The pressure and velocities at different heights and distances from the train centre line were analysed following the directive criteria, concluding that the simplified TGV duplex train satisfies the normative requirements related with pressure and velocity, under open-air conditions and also on the platform.

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