Train Zero: prototyping on the go

摘要

When it won the contract for supplying the rolling stock for London's Crossrail project, Bombardier was faced with building a new train from scratch to exacting specifications against tight deadlines - a formidable task, given the advanced system requirements in the specification - and no opportunity for getting it wrong when the final train is submitted for acceptance testing. Part of the challenge of putting such a large and complex system together is that the design is reliant on individual sub-systems being simulated in prototype form as an integrated part of the entire train, which is difficult to achieve for each part of the development cycle when there are thousands of such sub-systems. To do this in the most effective way, Bombardier's train division chose to use what it refers to as "Train Zero", the rail variant of Bombardier Aerospace's "Aircraft Zero" - or Iron Bird system verification platform - which is essentially an aircraft that will never fly, but which contains all the sub-systems interconnected on a test bed for validation and verification purposes.