Criteria and Procedures for Assessing Occupied Volume Integrity

Details

• Creators:
  Carolan, Michael E. ; Perlman, A. Benjamin ; Tyrell, David C.
• Corporate Creators:
  John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (U.S.)
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Crashworthiness
  • Occupant protection devices
  • Passenger cars
  • Railroad cars
  • Test procedures
  • Decision making
  • Railroad safety
  • Railroad passenger cars
  • Decision making
  • Passenger trains
• Publication/ Report Number:
  RTD2010-42022
• Resource Type:
  Proceedings
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Corporate Publisher:
  American Society of Mechanical Engineers
• Abstract:
  With the potential for tremendous growth in the passenger rail ; industry, providing for the safety of the train-riding public and ; the crews who transport them becomes an ever-greater priority. ; To provide for safety while making best use of its resources ; and to facilitate passenger rail industry growth, the Federal ; Railroad Administration (FRA), in consultation with the rail ; industry, has developed alternative Criteria and Procedures for ; assessing the crashworthiness and occupant protection ; measures of rail passenger equipment. These Criteria and ; Procedures are intended to be applicable to a wide range of ; equipment designs, particularly equipment designs not ; complying with current U.S. standards and regulations. ; Because the latest technology in rail equipment ; crashworthiness has been used to develop the Criteria and ; Procedures, aspects of the resulting Criteria and Procedures are ; fundamentally different from their corresponding regulations. ; While technical results from sophisticated analyses and tests ; have been necessary, judgment was also needed to develop the ; Criteria and Procedures. This judgment was provided by the ; Engineering Task Force (ETF), and ultimately accepted by ; FRA. The ETF is a government/industry working group, ; organized under the auspices of the Railroad Safety Advisory ; Committee (RSAC). ; The Criteria and Procedures are intended to provide an ; engineering-based methodology for comparing the ; crashworthiness of alternatively-designed equipment with that ; of compliant designs. One particularly important aspect of ; passenger car crashworthiness is occupied volume integrity ; (OVI). It is essential that all passenger vehicles meet some ; base minimum level of OVI. A primary goal of ; crashworthiness is to maintain a volume for occupants to ride ; out a collision. In the U.S., this base level has been ; demonstrated through a vehicle’s ability to react a quasi-static ; load of 800,000 pounds along its line of draft without ; experiencing permanent deformation. This car-level ; requirement has existed, in some form, since the early 20th ; century. However, alternatively-designed vehicles may not be ; able to demonstrate the ability to support this load, but may still ; prove to be equivalently crashworthy. Based on analyses ; performed on conventional and alternatively-designed ; passenger equipment, three options have been developed to ; demonstrate the OVI of alternatively-designed equipment. ; These options consist of three load magnitudes placed along ; the collision load path with a corresponding pass/fail criterion ; for each load. OVI may be demonstrated by sustaining an ; 800,000 pound load with no permanent deformation, a ; 1,000,000 pound load with limited permanent deformation, or a ; 1,200,000 pound load without exceeding the crippling load of ; the occupied volume. ; This paper discusses the pass/fail criteria associated with each ; option, the analysis and test procedures used in applying each ; option, and the technical basis used in developing the Criteria ; and Procedures for OVI evaluation. By applying such ; techniques, the results of evaluations of alternatively-designed ; equipment can be compared with the Criteria values for ; compliant designs. In this manner, the crashworthiness ; performance of alternatively-designed equipment can be ; assessed relative to the performance of compliant designs. A ; companion paper to this one discusses the development of the ; train-level Criteria and Procedures.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/9491/dot_9491_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 618.97 KB]
• Collection(s):
  Volpe Center
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:0dca5e443a366becb372ce48ce9e4d6133df462900d46b4135805069a5aa21cd541b2083a070e0247b19dbb242c34b85925b7db7afac2458fbadb50256a21039