A study has been conducted of locomotive crashworthiness in a range of collision scenarios to support the efforts of the Locomotive Crashworthiness Working Group of the Federal Railroad Administration's Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) to develop locomotive crashworthiness requirements. The RSAC is a government/industry committee including all segments of the rail community, with the purpose of developing solutions to safety regulatory issues. This paper presents the results of a study of the crashworthiness of conventional and modified locomotive designs in five collision scenarios. The five collision scenarios studied are:1. in-line collision of two locomotive-led trains with trailing locomotive overriding leading locomotive 2. in-line collision of two locomotive-led trains with one colliding locomotive overriding the other 3. locomotive grade crossing collision with highway vehicle hauling logs, with principal impact on locomotive window area 4. oblique collision, locomotive with intermodal trailer 5. oblique collision, locomotive with freight car
A study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of structural modifications to rail cab cars for increased crashworthiness protection in train collisions. The crashworthiness benefits were calculated based on a particular design's ability to preserve the space occupied by the operators and the passengers during a collision. The influences of the modifications on vehicle weight and cost to manufacture were also estimated. The focus of the study was a collision scenario in which a cab car-led consist traversing a switch onto mainline track obliquely collides with a locomotive-led consist traveling in the opposing direction on the mainline track.Modifying the strength of the end-structure members up to the load limits implied by the support structures -800,000 pounds -increases the collision speed at which all the occupants are expected to survive tõ 20 mph from ~10 mph for the baseline design. Within the allowable spaces of the baseline design, potential modifications have been developed which increase the end beam strength to nearly three times the baseline design strength, and increase the side sill strength to 1¼ times the baseline strength. Such design modifications, along with commensurate corner post and door post designs, made to the leading end of the cab car would add 670 lbs (~0.7% ) to the weight of the cab car and about $2000 (~0.1%) to the purchase price.
The Office of Research and Development of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the Volpe Center are continuing to evaluate new technologies for increasing the safety of passengers and operators in rail equipment. In recognition of the importance of override prevention in train-totrain collisions in which one of the vehicles is a locomotive, and in light of the success of crash energy management technologies in cab car-led passenger trains, the Volpe Center seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of components that could be integrated into the end structure of a locomotive that are specifically designed to mitigate the effects of a collision and, in particular, to prevent override of one of the lead vehicles onto the other. A research program has been conducted to develop, fabricate and test two crashworthy components for the forward end of a locomotive: (1) a deformable anti-climber, and (2) a push-back coupler. Detailed designs for these components were developed, and the performance of each design was evaluated through large deformation dynamic finite element analysis (FEA). Designs for two test articles that could be used to verify the performance of the component designs in fullscale tests were also developed. The two test articles were fabricated and dynamically tested by means of rail car impact in order to verify certain performance characteristics of the two components relative to specific requirements. The tests were successful in demonstrating the effectiveness of the two design concepts. Test results were consistent with finite element model predictions in terms of energy absorption capability, forcedisplacement behavior and modes of deformation.
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