Train Traction System in MATLAB

 Week 4 25/02/2022 Today is the end of the fourth week. Following the plan for this week, we have the final interface of the train traction system implemented.   In this view, we can construct a timetable for a chosen route. Select an unlimited number of vehicles on a selected path and drive out of the station in sequence at specified intervals. The trajectory of the vehicles will be depicted in the form of animations, thus achieving a realistic simulation. As shown in the below screenshot, the simple timetable can consist of different vehicle models and the time interval between each train. The route characteristic will be presented and the running diagram of this series of vehicles will be plotted as an animation. The problem we encountered when designing this view is that unexpected behaviours of variables can be observed (e.g., calculations with arrays of different lengths which would not happen in the case of a single simulation) since consecutive simulations is required ...

 Week 3 18/02/2022 We are at the end of the third week. In this week, we added a new feature to form the second interface of the train traction system; this interface allows the comparison between two vehicle models on the same route. The simulation outputs are essentially the same as the first interface. However, since they contain results for both vehicles, a more straightforward comparison can be observed by the user. Based on these results, the choice of vehicles to be operated on a certain route can be made. The screenshots of the second interface are shown below (different tabs are shown). It can be seen that plots of two vehicles are shown together for the convenient comparison. This actually links to the major challenge we encountered this week. How to display so many plots in the app interface which is quite limited. We solved this problem by using the “ tab group ” component in the app designer; different plots can be shown under various tabs.   For next week, we pl...

 Week 2 11/02/2022 Today is the end of the second week and we have done more than what we planned in the first week!   The screenshot of the first interface of our app is shown below. In terms of inputs, the vehicle and route can be selected (we only have two of each for the purpose of debugging), and the Max Speed and Coasting Velocity of the vehicle can be adjusted. In terms of outputs, we have six graphs plotted for an intuitive understanding of the whole journey of the train. Among them, the running diagram is an animation showing the real time location of the train! Additionally, we have numerical outputs for more information. For example, the user of this system can observe the total energy consumption of a journey.   In this week’s development, we did encounter some problems, but we managed to solve them by searching online. One problem is that we use “clear all” when the “clear simulation” button is clicked, but this does not work as we expected because the proper...

 Week 1 04/02/2022 Today is the end of the first week and we wrap up the progress of the first week. This week we got a systematic understanding of the project by reading the introduction documents of the MATLAB scripts of train simulation system. The operation of the system can be summarized in terms of inputs and outputs. The input is the vehicle model and the route (each of which consists of many parameters); the outputs are several simulation results which can be either a value (e.g., total travel time, and total energy consumption) or plots (e.g., distance/time plot, and speed/distance plot). We realized that this project requires the knowledge of MATLAB GUI design. Therefore, we started to learn some basics of MATLAB app designer from online resources, and based on our current pace, we plan to continue learning at the first half of the second week. After that, we will work on the basic design of the first interface (at the current stage, we determined that our app will consis...

 Week 0 04/02/2022 This blog is to document the entire development process of our Y2 project. We will update it weekly. Our project is to design a train traction system. To be specific, we will use MATLAB App designer to produce an interface to enable users to choose from different routes and vehicle models, and then some of the critical simulation results and plots will be presented. For this project, we will learn to build an app with MATLAB, which is likely to be challenging, but also fun!