Industry Leading
Railway Dynamics
Software

IMechE Railway Challenge Offer - January 2025

AtkinsRéalis is proud to be supporting the IMechE Railway Challenge by offering participating teams free access to Vampire Pro for the duration of the competition.

Led by an enthusiastic organising committee of senior engineers working in the railway industry and supported by a dedicated team at the IMechE, this annual engineering competition tasks teams to design and manufacture a miniature (10¼” gauge) railway locomotive in accordance with a strict set of rules and a detailed technical specification.

Use of Vampire Pro by Railway Challenge teams will empower them to simulate and assess the performance of their locomotives prior to manufacture, and thereby refine their designs before the competition weekend. Simulation is a core technology to the design and introduction of rolling stock, enabling costly or impractical tests to be executed using a validated vehicle model, and we are excited for the competitors to see this process play out in miniature.

AtkinsRéalis has provided a dedicated release of the software for the Railway Challenge restricted to miniature railway use. This features example miniature gauge models and competition-specific guides for teams to work from. AtkinsRéalis has provided each team with two licence seats for the duration of the competition year. A half-day training session was held on 22nd January 2025 to introduce the teams to modelling and simulation within Vampire Pro.

For more information and direct enquiries, please contact the Vampire team using the contact details below.

Advanced User Guides - November 2024

We are pleased to provide advanced tutorial guides on various topics within Vampire. These guides provide practical instruction on modelling complex elements; making full best use of Vampire's features; and more. You can find the list of topics and synopses of each guide here along with links to the member area to download the full guide. All guides are available in the Members Area.

SNC-Lavalin is now AtkinsRéalis - September 2023

The entities of the SNC-Lavalin Group (such as SNC-Lavalin, Atkins, and Faithful+Gould) have been brought together under a single brand: AtkinsRéalis. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far, and this is a new milestone in our growth. For more details please visit the AtkinsRéalis website.

Rest assured, Vampire Pro is still developed and supported by the same team of industry experts. Working together under our exciting new brand makes it even easier than ever to tap into the full expertise you need.

Vampire Pro 8.00 Released - July 2022

We are pleased to announce the release of Vampire Pro 8.00, a major release in the Vampire development cycle providing a significant enhancement to the capabilities in modelling the wheel-rail interface, along with a small number of maintenance and bug fixes.

Vampire Pro 8.00 provides a brand-new additional Vampire creep law that solves the contact solution in-line rather than through pre-calculated contact data tables. This new creep law is suitable for use in short analysis sections where increased accuracy of the wheel-rail contact conditions is critical. The advantage of this approach over pre-calculated tables is it can take into account variables in the contact calculation that arise during the simulation that a pre-calculated table can only approximate. This makes the simulation more accurate as it can account for track gauge changes, changing rail profiles and wheelset angle of attack to name a few variables.

The benefits of the new In-Line creep law include:

• Improved accuracy for simulations under dynamically varying conditions.
• Improved accuracy for switch & crossing simulations and transitions to tight curves.
• Ability to simulate vehicles with different wheel profiles on axles running over track with varying rail profiles.

Development of this In-Line contact creep law will also allow future development in areas such as improved track modelling and the incorporation of other in-line methods such as Vtech CMCC’s CONTACT solution.

Existing customers can download the latest release in the members area. For new customers and enquiries, or if you cannot access the members area, then please contact the Vampire team using the contact details below.

Vampire Virtual User Event - 14 June 2022

A big thank you to all those who presented at and attended our second Vampire Virtual User Event. It was a great success and good to see such a large cross-section of the Vampire community. Recordings and slides for all the presentations are available here. We hope to see you again at future events both virtual and in person.

Vampire Pro Version 7.10 Released - May 2021

AtkinsRéalis is pleased to announce the release of Vampire Pro 7.10. This is the first release of Vampire Pro to bring new features and enhancements since AtkinsRéalis acquired the rights to develop, license and support Vampire Pro. The key features and enhancements have been driven by user feedback and include:

• Longitudinal Dynamics - Addition of curving resistance and user-defined propulsion resistance, enabling trains to slow down with respect to curves, braking forces and air resistance.
• Hysteresis Preload and Clearance Keywords - Easier to define and adjust hysteresis characteristics.
• Numerical Stability Checker - Ability to capture and avoid occurrences of numerical instability.
• Improved Modelling of Checkrails - Including loss of contact and new and improved creepage and output equations.
• Improved Contact Data Generation for yawed wheelsets and low angle two-point contact calculation.
• Improved Sperling Ride Index - Evolution of the index to a more consistent method.
• Completion of rebranding - Including individual icons helping to easily identify each application.
• Minor bug fixes.

Existing customers can download the latest release in the members area. For new customers and enquiries, or if you cannot access the members area, then please contact the Vampire team using the contact details below.

Railway Industry Association - Vehicle Track Interface Group - 26 November 2020

Farzana Hampshire, Team Leader – Dynamics, Gauging & Testing at AtkinsRéalis Atkins, presented a live Webinar on 26th November 2020 covering how AtkinsRéalis has come to take on the role of developing, licensing and supporting Vampire vehicle dynamics software, and their commitment to the software and plans for the future. You can view the recording of the event here (RIA logon required).

Vampire Virtual User Event - 16 July 2020

A big thank you to all those who presented at and attended our first Vampire Virtual User Event. It was a great success and good to see such a large cross-section of the Vampire community. A full recording of the event and all the presentations are available here. We hope to see you again at future events both virtual and in person.