State of the Art Review on the Crashworthiness of Railway Vehicles

Abstract

The state of the art is reviewed for the crashworthiness of railway vehicles in aspects of materials, energy absorbing structures, train collision simulation and experiments. The recoverable and nonreversible energy absorbers are introduced for railway vehicles first. Metallic and non-metallic materials play a crucial role in the energy dissipation process. Thin-walled structures at vehicle ends are the main energy absorbers in train collisions, which include the deformation tube, crush box, deformable anti-climber and vehicle end structures. It is necessary to build a specific dynamic model for subway and high-speed trains, which includes gas-hydraulic buffers and energy absorption devices. Furthermore, train crashworthiness could be improved with the help of crash energy management. The train collision is commonly studied by numerical methods and experiments. The research method mainly depends on the primary purpose. The simulation depending on numerical methods should be validated by related experiments. The methods provide theoretical support for train crashworthy design.