This article was downloaded by: [Istanbul Technical University] On: 04 August 2013, At: 23:30 Publisher: Taylor

& Francis Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

International Journal of Crashworthiness

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcrs20

Railroad passenger car collision analysis and modifications for improved crashworthiness
Cengiz Baykasolu , Emin Snblolu , Sureyya E. Bozda , Fatih Aruk , Tuncer Toprak
a a a a a a

& Ata Mugan

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

To cite this article: Cengiz Baykasolu , Emin Snblolu , Sureyya E. Bozda , Fatih Aruk , Tuncer Toprak & Ata Mugan (2011) Railroad passenger car collision analysis and modifications for improved crashworthiness, International Journal of Crashworthiness, 16:3, 319-329, DOI: 10.1080/13588265.2011.566475 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13588265.2011.566475

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the Content) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

International Journal of Crashworthiness Vol. 16, No. 3, June 2011, 319329

Railroad passenger car collision analysis and modications for improved crashworthiness
Cengiz Baykaso glu, Emin S unb ulo glu, Sureyya E. Bozda g, Fatih Aruk, Tuncer Toprak and Ata Mugan
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey (Received 14 November 2010; nal version received 23 February 2010) In this study, crashworthiness assessment and suggestions for the modication of a railroad passenger car are presented. To assess the crashworthiness, collision of the railroad passenger car onto a rigid wall is simulated by using nite element (FE) methods. A full-length, detailed passenger car model is used in FE analyses. In order to validate the FE model, simulation results obtained for different types of static loading conditions in compliance with various scenarios dened in UIC CODE OR 577 are compared with experimental measurements before running collision analyses of the railroad passenger car. The good agreement between static tests and FE analyses results indicates that the FE model accurately represents the real structure. Following the FE model validation, analysis of the collision behaviour of the railroad passenger car consists of two stages. In the rst stage, the crashworthiness of the initial concept design of the railroad passenger car is analysed. It was observed that local buckling takes place at various points, which prevents the desired progressive damage behaviour in the railroad car body. Having revealed the structural weaknesses, the initial design was modied and simulated again under the same conditions. Using size optimisation, thickness of some sheet metal components is changed in order to obtain the intended progressive damage behaviour. As a result of the modications, the passenger car design with better crashworthiness properties was obtained, in which large plastic deformations occur around the collision side of the car while mainly elastic deformations occur in the cars body away from the bumpers. Keywords: railroad vehicle collision; crash simulation; crashworthiness; nite element methods

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Introduction When a high speed train crash occurs, optimum occupant protection is very important to prevent loss of life. It was observed in many crash accidents that the traditional structural design approach, which satises the design requirements only for static loading conditions, does not provide optimum occupant protection; thus, considerable research has focused on structural crashworthiness of train design in the last two decades. The most popular occupant protection approach is passive protection. According to this approach, when a collision occurs, a passenger car deforms and collapses in such a controlled manner that large plastic deformations occur around the collision side of the passenger car; mainly, elastic deformations occur in the other regions and impact energy is absorbed safely outside of passengers living regions [6]. Computational methods and validation of their results by comparisons with experimental measurements are a commonly used approach in crashworthiness studies of railroad vehicles. There are some studies focusing on analysis and improving crashworthiness capacity of railroad vehicles [2,1113], crashworthiness capacity determination of existing railroad vehicle [3] and the crashworthy design of new railroad vehicles [4,5]. Some standards of structural design and requirement can be found in studies by Sutton

[7] and Tyrell [8]. As experimental analyses of crashworthiness are very costly in terms of time, funding and equipment resources, they cannot be used at all stages of design, which make the computational methods as important tools in crashworthiness studies in the present times. Although computational simulations do not have aforementioned disadvantages of experimental methods, to obtain realistic results, they must reect the real vehicle behaviour and crash conditions accurately, imposing the need for any numerical model to be veried by experiments. Most of the studies on the crash behaviour of railroad vehicles simulate a collision with a rigid wall. This is a simple and ideal model to reveal the general characteristics of impact behaviour of a full-scale car with impact test [9] and/or computational simulations [2,12,13]. Different types of crash tests [10] and simulations [11] can also be found in literature. Crash analyses of a railroad passenger car FE model A railroad passenger car called N13-type used by Turkish State Railways is examined in this study. It consists of two sidewalls, one oor, roof and end-walls. There are 22 windows on the two sidewalls. Most of the car body is made of beams and shells. The passenger car has a maximum

Corresponding author. Email: baykasoglu@itu.edu.tr

ISSN: 1358-8265 print / ISSN: 1754-2111 online C 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13588265.2011.566475 http://www.informaworld.com

320

C. Baykaso glu et al. road passenger car model used in this study has a width of approximately 2800 mm, length of 26,000 mm and height of 3300 mm. The model has approximately 2000 different components and 65,000 surfaces. The geometric car model used in this study is shown in Figure 1. The original passenger car body is made of ve different steel materials such as stainless steel, St 12, Stw 24, St 37 and St 52. The weight of the passenger car is approximately 12.5 tons except for bogies, passengers and other equipments. Bogies and rail tracks have not been modelled explicitly, but corresponding point masses and boundary conditions were applied to simulate the effect of bogies and auxiliary equipments. The total car tare weight is approximately 50 tons, including bogies and other equipments. The complete model of the passenger car contains approximately 1,650,000 elements. Approximately 95% of the elements are linear quadrilateral shell elements, 3% of the elements are rigid connection elements to represent weldings and the rest are linear triangular shell elements and linear 3D solid elements. A mesh view of the complete FE model of the vehicle structure used in this study is shown in Figure 2, and the FE model of the end region of the passenger car is shown in Figure 3. In order to increase the visibility, some shell elements were hidden on the sidewalls, roof and oor areas. To investigate the damage progress in the passenger car, the crash speeds are chosen to be high enough to yield the collapse of the whole vehicle end areas. Even

Figure 1. Geometric model of the passenger car.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 2. FE model of the passenger car.

design speed of 160 km/h. End regions of the car contain entrance doors, corridors, water supplies, toilets and electric distribution cupboards. This layout enables the use of these areas as energy absorption regions far away from the main occupant area. The middle part of the car is the cabin, from which large deformations are to be kept away. The rail-

Figure 3. FE model of the end part of the passenger car.

International Journal of Crashworthiness

321

Figure 4. Passenger car crash model and the rigid wall.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

though various crash speeds are used in crash simulations, mainly the results obtained for 90 km/h are examined in this paper because of limited space. The sample crash case is the scenario based on the passenger car crashing onto a rigid wall with a speed of 90 km/h (25 m/s) as shown in Figure 4. The duration of collision is selected to be 100 ms in simulations in which the software Abaqus/Explicit is used. In order to increase the stable time increment, mass scaling method in Abaqus was applied to the model. It was controlled by changing the mass scaling values such that the total mass due to articial mass scaling was not altered more than 0.3% after trial runs. The simulation procedure used in all collision analyses is the explicit method implemented in Abaqus/Explicit [1] on a computer having eight CPUs, 64 GB RAM and 2 TB hardisk capacity. The coupler system treatment is an important issue in the assessment of the crashworthiness of railroad vehicles,

as it is the rst component to contact the rigid wall in a crash, and absorbs a certain amount of impact energy. As our main concern was to investigate the worst case to which a railroad car is subjected, and the crashworthiness of the passenger car would be positively affected by the the coupler system, the coupler system is not included in the model. The passenger car underframe is the most important component for crash energy dissipation that can be divided into two zones by considering the crash characteristics. Figure 5 shows the end of the underoor structure of the passenger car. In this gure, the rst zone starts at the end wall and nishes 450 mm away from the end wall. The second zone is the continuing region of the rst zone as shown in Figure 5. The rst zone is the rst contact region and substantially less strong than the second zone, as most of the components are made of thin shells in this region.

Figure 5. Bottom end structure of the passenger car.

322

C. Baykaso glu et al.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 6. Experimental setup (a) and some strain gauges (b).

Validation of the FE model by comparisons with static tests To validate the FE model, static FE simulation studies are completed according to the International Standard UIC CODE OR 577. The same tests are also been applied to a prototype passenger car located at TUVASAS (Turkish Wagon Industry Inc.) in Adapazari, Turkey. A total of 30 strain gauge rosettes were applied to a quarter of the car body to capture the plane-stress behaviour of the structure, and the simulation results were compared with experimental measurements. Figure 6 shows the experimental car setup and some strain gauges positions. The passenger car is assumed to be empty in FE analyses. In addition, bogies are not modelled explicitly, but their weights are imposed as lumped masses at the points where the passenger car body and the bogies are connected to. Figure 7 shows the three experimental loading cases. Figure 8 shows the compar-

isons of the measurements with FE stress results obtained for a symmetrical compression force of 200 tons at the strain gauge points. Figure 9 shows the comparisons for the measurements obtained for a tensile force of 150 tons, and Figure 10 shows the experimental measurements and FE results obtained for a cross-compression force of 50 tones at various strain gauge points. In conclusion, the results of FE model were observed to be in good agreement with experimental strain gauge measurements (in brief, 27 gauge locations demonstrate less than 10% error in von Mises stress values).

Crash progress in the passenger car body Figure 11 shows the crash progress in the passenger car structure for eight different time instants. Only the end region of the passenger car structure is shown in this gure

International Journal of Crashworthiness

323

Figure 7. Three loading cases: (a) Symmetrical compression force of 200 tons, (b) tensile force of 150 tons, (c) cross-compression force of 50 tons.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

for clarity. It can be seen in Figure 11 that the deformation of the initial concept passenger car structure does not follow the desired progressive damage form; zone 1 collapsed fully at a time instant of 18 ms, then plastic deformation started in zone 2 and undesired local buckling occurs in the cabin area. At 100 ms, the end area of the passenger car fully collapsed and plastic deformation occurred in the local buckling areas. Thus, structural modications are necessary to prevent this local buckling, achieve the desired progressive deformation form and enhance crashworthiness. Figure 12 shows the relationship between the reaction force and time. The progress of the collision force can be divided into two phases. In the rst phase, taking place in the rst 18 ms, it can be seen that the maximum value of the collision force looks like a pulse when the passenger car rst comes into contact with the rigid wall. Although the coupler system is not included in the model, zone 1 (which is the weakest area of the passenger car) behaves like the coupler system and reduces the peak value of the

rst contact force. In this phase, the reaction forces are in the range of 0.82.8 MN except for the impulses in the beginning of the crash zone 1. In the next phase between 18 and 100 ms time interval, when deformation starts at the rst support beams in zone 2, a high impulse force appears at the time instant of 18 ms due to the rst support beam deformation. At the time instant of 22 ms, another peak in collision force appears again due to the deformation of second support beams. During the time interval of 22100 ms, the reaction forces are in the range of 1.03.1 MN except for the impulses in the beginning of the crash zone 2. Figure 13 shows the history of the crash energy absorption during crash simulation at the speed of 90 km/h. After the rst deformation phase (from 0 to 18 ms), variation of the absorption energy shows an almost linear trend in time. Thus, it can be concluded that although some local bucklings occur in the cabin areas shown in Figure 11, collision energy absorption continues in a stable fashion

Figure 8. Results of symmetric compression force of 200 tons.

324

C. Baykaso glu et al.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 9. Results of tensile force of 150 tons. (Gauge number 30 is not shown due to scale; its test measurement is 516 MPa and FE analysis result is 571 MPa.)

and the passenger car end structure absorbs a considerable amount of crash energy. Over the total 100 ms period, total collision energy of 7.4 MJ is absorbed by the car body. About 16% of this energy is absorbed by zone 1. Figure 14 shows the time history of the longitudinal displacement of the two nodes, with labels 643516 and 783617, which are located on the borders of front and rear cabin areas, respectively. The displacement at node 783617 indicates the deformation of the passenger car end structure. The considerable difference between the displacements of these two nodes shows that large amount of plastic deformation occurs in the passenger cabin. It can be seen in Figure 11 that the side sill buckling causes this difference. Elastic deformation of the cabin is observed in the rst 20 ms, but after this time interval, plastic deformation starts in the cabin due to side sill buckling. At the time instant of 100 ms, the difference between displacements of the two nodes is about 250 mm.

It is concluded that the passenger car end structure absorbs a certain amount of collision energy in contact with a rigid wall, but the desired progressive deformation form is not observed due to the plastic deformation in the passenger cabin. Thus, modications are needed to prevent plastic deformation in the cabin to ensure optimal occupant protection.

Structural weak points and crashworthiness enhancement It is already observed that the side sill buckling occurs during the crash and structural improvement is needed to stabilise the process. The side sills shown in Figure 15 are long and thin components in the passenger car. So, they can be easily bent in the lateral plane. Several support beam and side sill thickness values are taken into consideration in order to adjust the relative stiffness of different underoor

Figure 10. Results of cross-compression force of 50 tons.

International Journal of Crashworthiness

325

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 11. Crash deformation progress in the initial concept passenger car at 90 km/h.

zones, enhance the structural stability of zone 2 and avoid lateral bending of the side sill. Subsequently, collision of the modied railroad passenger car onto a rigid wall is simulated and the results of the modied and original structures are compared. In Figure 16, the modied passenger car crashes into a rigid wall at an initial speed of 90 km/h. It is concluded from Figure 16 that the end structure of the passenger car undergoes pro-

gressive deformation, and the problems that appeared in the original passenger car body were overcome as a result of the modications. Desired large plastic deformation occurs at the end region of the passenger car and small elastic deformation occurs in the passenger cabin. Zone 1 collapses fully at the time instant of 18 ms (similar to that of the original model), and then zone 2 undergoes the deformation of about 2200 mm at 100 ms.

326

C. Baykaso glu et al.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 12. Collision force versus time.

Figure 14. Displacement of the two reference nodes located at the two ends of passenger cabin.

Figure 17 shows the relationship between the reaction force and time for the modied car crashing at 90 km/h. The progress of the crash force is similar to that of the original passenger car. Reaction force increases and energy absorption capability of the end structure is enhanced due to structural modications. No weakness or deciency is observed in the modied passenger car. Figure 18 shows the energy absorbed by both the modied and original passenger cars. Over the total 100 ms

period, the modied passenger car absorbed a total energy of 8.35 MJ, which is 13% more than that of the original passenger car. Similar to the original case, 1.2 MJ of energy is absorbed by zone 1 (from 0 to 18 ms). It can be deduced from Figure 18 that the energy absorption of the modied passenger car structure shows a stable trend similar to that of the original passenger car body. Figure 19 shows the displacement history of the longitudinal displacements of the two reference nodes of the modied car structure, with labels 643516 and 783617, which are located on the front and rear of the cabin, respectively. In Figure 19, it can be seen that there is no considerable relative displacement between node 643516 and node 783617. The displacement at node 783617 indicates the deformation of the passenger car end structure and it is about 2200 mm. On the basis of these observations, it is concluded that the cabin has undergone only elastic deformations while the passenger car end area collapsed progressively.

Figure 13. Collision energy absorbed by the passenger car structure.

Figure 15. View of the side sill.

International Journal of Crashworthiness

327

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 16. Crash deformation progress of the end of the modied passenger car at 90 km/h.

Figure 17. Collision force versus time for the modied passenger car.

Figure 18. Collision energy absorbed by the modied and original passenger car structures.

328

C. Baykaso glu et al.

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

Figure 19. Displacements of two reference nodes of the modied passenger car.

Conclusion The energy absorption capability of the full-scale original and modied railroad passenger cars is examined during a crash into a wall. This is evaluated by simulating the crash of the railroad car onto a rigid wall at 90 km/h. It was shown that the original passenger car structure absorbs the collision energy in a stable trend, but the deformation of the car body does not follow the desired progressive form and local buckling occurs. These undesired deformation characteristics occur due to the side sill buckling and too stiff behaviour of zone 2 components, that is, support beams. Side sill buckling causes plastic deformation of the passenger cabin region and destroys the stability of the structure. In addition, excessively stiff components do not deform in the desired manner, which in turn transmits the crash force into the interior regions and prevents the structural stability as well. In order to improve the progressive deformation feature and enhance the energy absorption ability of the car structure, the thickness values of the side sill and various zone 2 components were modied to adjust relative stiffness of different underoor regions. As a result of the size optimisation of the thickness values of these components, the plastic deformation of the cabin is prevented and desired progressive deformation of the passenger car end

regions is satised. The modied passenger car absorbs about 13% more energy than that of the original passenger car structure. In these analyses, only rigid wall crash scenarios were considered. This is the simplest and most ideal crash scenario, but it is very useful to obtain general characteristics of crash behaviour of railroad vehicles. In future, crash study of two trains can be completed on the basis of the models presented in this paper. Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr. Erdal Aba, Orhan Aydemir, urk, Cemil Uslu, G Yusuf Aldemir, Tanzer Ozt okhan Ylmaz, Taner Saruhani and Halil Ersoy from Turkish Wagon Industry (TUVASAS). This research is supported by The Scientic and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) under the grant number 105G123.

References
[1] Dassault Systems Inc., Abaqus Users Manual Ver. 6.8. Dausault Systems Inc., Lowell, Massachusetts, USA, 2008. Available online at: www.simulia.com. [2] G.J. Gao and H.Q. Tian, Trains crashworthiness design and collision analysis, Int. J. Crashworthiness 12 (2007), pp. 2128.

International Journal of Crashworthiness

[3] S.W. Kirkpatrick, M. Schroeder, and J.W. Simons, Evaluation of passenger rail vehicle crashworthiness, Int. J. Crashworthiness 6 (2001), pp. 95106. [4] J.H. Lewis, W.G. Rasaiah, and A. Sholes, Validation of measures to improve rail vehicle crashworthiness, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., Part F: J. Rail Rapid Transit 210 (1996), pp. 7385. [5] R. Mayville, A.D. Little, and K. Johnson, The development of a rail passenger coach car crush zone, Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium, Passive Safety of Rail Vehicles, Berlin, 2002. [6] A. Scholes and J.H. Lewis, Development of crashworthiness for railway vehicle structures, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., Part F: J. Rail Rapid Transit 207 (1993), pp. 116. [7] A. Sutton, The development of rail vehicle crashworthiness, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., Part F: J. Rail Rapid Transit 216 (2001), pp. 97108. [8] D.C. Tyrell, US rail equipment crashworthiness standards, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., Part F: J. Rail Rapid Transit 216 (2002), pp. 123130.

329

Downloaded by [Istanbul Technical University] at 23:30 04 August 2013

[9] D. Tyrell, K. Severson, and A.B. Perlman, Single Passenger Rail Car Impact Test Volume I: Overview and Selected Results, DOT/FRA/ORD-00/02.1, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC, March 2000. [10] D. Tyrell, K. Severson, and A.B. Perlman, Passenger Rail Two-Car Impact Test Volume I: Overview and Selected Results, DOT/FRA/ORD-01/22.I, U.S. Department of Transportation, Washington, DC, January 2002. [11] X. Xue, F. Schmid, and R.A. Smith, A study of modeling approaches for rail vehicle collision behavior, Int. J. Crashworthiness 9 (2004), pp. 515525. [12] X. Xue, R.A. Smith, and F. Schmid, Analysis of crush behaviors of a rail cab car and structural modications for improved crashworthiness, Int. J. Crashworthiness 10 (2005), pp. 125136. [13] X. Xue, F. Schmid, and R.A. Smith, Analysis of the structural characteristics of an intermediate rail vehicle and their effect on vehicle crash performance, Proc. Instn. Mech. Engrs., Part F: J. Rail Rapid Transit 221 (2007), pp. 339 352.