A strategy for lightweight designing of a railway vehicle car body including composite material and dynamic structural optimization

Rolling stock manufacturers are finding structural solutions to reduce power required by the vehicles,and the lightweight design of the car body represents a possible solution.Optimization processes and innovative materials can be combined in order to achieve this goal.In this framework,we propose the redesign and optimization process of the car body roof for a light rail vehicle,introducing a sandwich structure.Bonded joint was used as a fastening system.The project was carried out on a single car of a modern tram platform.This preliminary numerical work was developed in two main steps:redesign of the car body structure and optimization of the innovated system.Objective of the process was the mass reduction of the whole metallic structure,while the constraint condition was imposed on the first frequency of vibration of the system.The effect of introducing a sandwich panel within the roof assembly was evaluated,focusing on the mechanical and dynamic performances of the whole car body.A mass saving of 63%on the optimized components was achieved,corresponding to a 7.6%if compared to the complete car body shell.In addition,a positive increasing of 17.7%on the first frequency of vibration was observed.Encouraging results have been achieved in terms of weight reduction and mechanical behaviour of the innovated car body.

Application of Hot Forming High Strength Steel Parts on Car Body in Side Impact

Lightweight structure is an important method to increase vehicle fuel efficiency.High strength steel is applied for replacing mild steel in automotive structures to decrease thickness of parts for lightweight.However,the lightweight structures must show the improved capability for structural rigidity and crash energy absorption.Advanced high strength steels are attractive materials to achieve higher strength for energy absorption and reduce weight of vehicles.Currently,many research works focus on component level axial crash testing and simulation of high strength steels.However,the effects of high strength steel parts to the impact of auto body are not considered.The goal of this research is to study the application of hot forming high strength steel(HFHSS) in order to evaluate the potential using in vehicle design for lightweight and passive safety.The performance of HFHSS is investigated by using both experimental and analytical techniques.In particular,the focus is on HFHSS which may have potential to enhance the passive safety for lightweight auto body.Automotive components made of HFHSS and general high strength steel(GHSS) are considered in this study.The material characterization of HFHSS is carried out through material experiments.The finite element method,in conjunction with the validated model is used to simulate the side impact of a car with GHSS and HFHSS parts according to China New Car Assessment Programme(C-NCAP) crash test.The deformation and acceleration characteristics of car body are analyzed and the injuries of an occupant are calculated.The results from the simulation analyses of HFHSS are compared with those of GHSS.The comparison indicates that the HFHSS parts on car body enhance the passive safety for the lightweight car body in side impact.Parts of HFHSS reduce weight of vehicle through thinner thickness offering higher strength of parts.Passive safety of lightweight car body is improved through reduction of crash deformation on car body by the application of HFHSS parts.The experiments and simulation are conducted to the HFHSS parts on auto body.The results demonstrate the feasibility of the application of HFHSS materials on automotive components for improved capability of passive safety and lightweight.

Design of lightweight magnesium car body structure under crash and vibration constraints

Car body design in view of structural performance and lightweighting is a challenging task due to all the performance targets that must be satisfied such as vehicle safety and ride quality.In this paper,material replacement along with multidisciplinary design optimization strategy is proposed to develop a lightweight car body structure that satisfies the crash and vibration criteria while minimizing weight.Through finite element simulations,full frontal,offset frontal,and side crashes of a full car model are evaluated for peak acceleration,intrusion distance,and the internal energy absorbed by the structural parts.In addition,the first three fundamental natural frequencies are combined with the crash metrics to form the design constraints.The wall thicknesses of twenty-two parts are considered as the design variables.Latin Hypercube Sampling is used to sample the design space,while Radial Basis Function methodology is used to develop surrogate models for the selected crash responses at multiple sites as well as the first three fundamental natural frequencies.A nonlinear surrogate-based optimization problem is formulated for mass minimization under crash and vibration constraints.Using Sequential Quadratic Programming,the design optimization problem is solved with the results verified by finite element simulations.The performance of the optimum design with magnesium parts shows significant weight reduction and better performance compared to the baseline design.

Improved lateral-dynamics-intended railway vehicle model involving nonlinear wheel/rail interaction and car body flexibility

To study the vehicle hunting behavior and its coupling with car body vibrations,a simplified lateral-dynamics-intended railway vehicle model is developed.A two-truck vehicle is modeled as a 17 degrees-of-freedom rigid system,into which the car body flexural vibrations of torsion and bending modes are further integrated.The wheel/rail interaction employs a real-time calculation for the Hertzian normal contact,in which the nonlinear curvatures of wheel and rail profiles are presented as functions of wheelset lateral movement and/or yaw rotation.Then the tangential/creep forces are analytically expressed as the Hertzian contact patch geometry,and lead to a continuous and fast calculation compared to a look-up table interpolation.It is shown that the hunting frequencies of the vehicle model and a truck model differ significantly,which verifies the necessity of the whole vehicle model.In the case of low wheel/rail conicity,the hunting frequency increases linearly with vehicle speed,whereas it rises slowly at high speed for a large conicity.Comparison of hunting frequency and damping ratio between various conicities shows that first hunting(car body hunting)may occur when the vehicle is operated at a low speed in a small conicity case,while a second hunting(truck hunting)appears when the vehicle is operated at a high speed in a large conicity case.Stability analysis of linear and nonlinear vehicle models was carried out through coast down method and constant speed simulations.Results tell that the linear one overestimates the lateral vibrating.Whereas the structural vibrations of car body can be ignored in the stability analysis.Compared to existing simplified models for hunting stability study,the proposed simplified vehicle model released limitations in the nonlinear geometries of wheel/rail profiles,and it is suitable for a frequency-domain analysis by deriving the analytical expressions of the normal and tangential wheel/rail contact forces.

The Application of HSLA Steel on Car Body

The role on improving the fuel economy and vehicle safety of HSLA steel was outlined.The application of HSLA steel on car body home and abroad was briefly introduced.

Fatigue test loading methodfor wagon body basedon measured load

Purpose–In this paper,the C80 special coal gondola car was taken as the subject,and the load test data of the car body at the center plate,side bearing and coupler measured on the dedicated line were broken down to generate the random load component spectrums of the car body under five working conditions,namely expansion,bouncing,rolling,torsion and pitching according to the typical motion attitude of the car body.Design/methodology/approach–On the basis of processing the measured load data,the random load component spectrums were equivalently converted into sinusoidal load component spectrums for bench test based on the principle of pseudo-damage equivalence of load.Relying on the fatigue and vibration test bench of the whole railway wagon,by taking each sinusoidal load component spectrum as the simulation target,the time waveform replication(TWR)iteration technology was adopted to create the drive signal of each loading actuator required for the fatigue test of car body on the bench,and the drive signal was corrected based on the equivalence principle of measured stress fatigue damage to obtain the fatigue test loads of car body under various typical working conditions.Findings–The fatigue test results on the test bench were substantially close to the measured test results on the line.According to the results,the relative error between the fatigue damage of the car body on the test bench and the measured damage on the line was within the range of
16.03%–27.14%.Originality/value–The bench test results basically reproduced the fatigue damage of the key parts of the car body on the line.

Modeling and simulation of railway vehicle vertical dynamic behavior by considering the effect of passenger-carbody coupling vibration

In order to reflect the vertical random vibration characteristics of railway vehicles more truly and effectively,this paper regards the human body as a single-degree-of-freedom system attached to the bottom of the carriage,and establishes a vertical dynamic model of railway vehicles by considering the influence of the coupling vibration effect between the passenger and the car body.The correctness of the model is verified by the real vehicle test.Then,the influence of the passengers on the vertical vibration characteristics of railway vehicles is analyzed,and the influence of the railway vehicle vibration on the vertical vibration characteristics of passengers is discussed in this paper.The research made in this paper can provide an effective model reference for the analysis of the vertical random vibration characteristics of railway vehicles and passengers,and for the optimization design of the suspension system parameters.

Innovative Electric Vehicle Body Design Based on Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Side Impact Conditions

A version of an electric vehicle was developed and designed for the US market on the basis of the required domestic body structure.When compared with the original car,the new car body design leads to two major technical difficulties.First,the installation of high-voltage components such as the battery pack and other new energy sources increases the vehicle weight and occupies a great deal of its structural space;this limits the impact paths and the use of traditional structural designs,which greatly increases the design difficulty.Second,the USA,as an advanced automobile-using country,has well-developed laws and regulations for collision standards,vehicle operating conditions and evaluation standards.Using a combination of butterfly diagram analysis,bending moment management,section forces and other computer-aided simulation and analysis techniques,this paper presents a body structure design that can achieve a“GOOD”evaluation under the US Insurance Institute for Highway Safety(IIHS)side impact body structure conditions by optimizing the force transfer path,the B-pillar deformation mode and the threshold support structure.The threshold support structure supports realization of the“GOOD”rating for IIHS side impact and helps the body to meet the crash requirements of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard FMVSS214 and the US New Car Assessment Program(NCAP)requirements for side impact at 32 km/h and 75°angular pole impact.