United States Department of Transportation
i
The influence of train type, car weight, and train length on passenger train crashworthiness
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2005-03-16
[PDF-245.14 KB]
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Alternative Title:Proceedings of the 2005 Joint Rail Conference
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Abstract:Crash energy management (CEM) is a type of equipment
design that is intended to protect occupant space during a
collision. Structures at the front and back of each car act as
crumple zones that absorb the collision energy. CEM is
intended to distribute the damage from a collision throughout a
consist to unoccupied areas. This paper describes how factors
that vary in the operation of passenger trains affect the
crashworthiness performance of conventional and CEM trains.
Crush and secondary impact velocity are introduced as
measures of crashworthiness performance. The collision
scenario selected for this study includes a standing locomotive led
freight train and a cab led passenger train with an initial
velocity. The passenger train contains either all CEM or all
conventional equipment, and is either a multiple unit (MU)
train with no locomotive, or push-pull train. The influence of
consist type (MU or push-pull,) car weight, and the number of
cars in a train-to-train crashworthiness are explored.
The crashworthy speed is that speed at which all of the
passenger train occupants are predicted to survive in the
selected collision scenario. For both conventional and CEM
equipment, MU trains have slightly higher crashworthy speeds
than push-pull trains. Trains with heavier cars have lower
crashworthy speeds for both conventional and CEM equipment.
Longer trains also have lower crashworthy speeds, although the
decrease crashworthy speed is less for CEM trains than for
conventional trains. In all cases evaluated, the CEM trains have
significantly higher crashworthy speed than the conventional
trains; the crashworthy speed of CEM trains is typically twice
that of conventional trains, and in some cases is nearly three
times greater.
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