Reliability Analysis and Preventive Maintenance for Fatigue Life of End Beam for Uncovered Freight Car

Fatigue life prediction based on the rainflow cycle counting method for the end beam of a freight car bogie

“…For this reason, 10 mm thick flat specimens were taken from a broken end beam of SS400 steel and investigated under alternating bending stresses (R = 1). Test results for fatigue life given in Baek et al (2005) were obtained by flat specimens on a Scenk type twisting and bending fatigue testing machine ( Figure 10), and then plotted on the S-N curves with 5%, 50%, and 95% failure probabilities. Figure 11 shows a P-S-N curve for SS400 steel.…”

“…are designed to last more than 25 years (Goo and Seo, 2003;Baek et al, 2005). In the case of a fractured bogie frame, service life can be affected because the maximum stress is lower than the fatigue limit.…”

Full scale fatigue test performed to the bolster beam of a railway vehicle

“…An accurate fatigue test takes into account mixture of loads that affect the structure and are hard to be considered during the design stage. In particular, railway-vehicles are designed to operate at more than twenty-five years [5,14], but real-life conditions present a complex mixture of alternated loads specific for each railway system implementation, such as railway routes, type of vehicles, schedule of operation and maintenance program amongst others. This could result in early wearing of components, namely: wear, cracks and fissures of structural elements; requiring frequent corrective maintenance tasks and also reducing dramatically its lifetime of operation [3,24].…”