Crashworthiness investigation of railway carriages

Abstract

Serious railway accidents in recent years in Japan were surveyed in order to clarify the target of railway crashworthiness. From the result, it was found that level crossing collision accidents were one of the most important targets of the crashworthiness of railway carriages. Both numerical simulations and empirical method to analyze crushing behaviour of railway carriages in Japan were applied in this research work. As the empirical methods, quasi-static compression tests for carbody sections were used to understand crushing behaviour of the carbody. Using the crushing characteristics obtained from the test, one-dimensional lumped mass numerical model was built and calculated to evaluate impacting behaviour of the trains at collision accidents. Three-dimensional FE analysis and real size train crash test were also included in this research program. The results of both numerical method and experimental tests were compared.