The Federal Railroad Administration’s Office of Research

and Development is conducting research into passenger

locomotive fuel tank crashworthiness. A series of impact tests

are planned to measure fuel tank deformation under two types

of dynamic loading conditions. This paper describes the test

requirements for the preliminary tests in this series – a blunt

impact of conventional locomotive fuel tanks.

Current design practice requires that Tier 1 locomotive fuel

tanks have minimum properties adequate to sustain a

prescribed set of static load conditions [1]. In accidents, fuel

tanks are subjected to dynamic loading, often including a blunt

or raking impact from various components of the rolling stock

or trackbed. Current research is intended to increase

understanding of the impact response of fuel tanks under

dynamic loading. Utilizing an approach that has been effective

in increasing the structural crashworthiness of passenger

railcars, improved strategies can be developed that will address

the types of loading conditions which have been observed to

occur in a collision or derailment event. The improvement

strategies developed by this research program can then be

applied to alternative fuel tank designs, such as diesel multiple

unit (DMU) tanks.

This paper describes test requirements for conducting two

preliminary tests. These tests are referred to as preliminary

because they will be used to evaluate the loading setup and

instrumentation planned for the larger series of tests. These

preliminary tests will evaluate a blunt impact on the bottom

surface of two conventional passenger locomotive fuel tanks.

The test articles chosen for the preliminary tests are fuel tanks

removed from two retired EMD F-40 locomotives. While these

fuel tanks do not reflect the current state of locomotive fuel

tank manufacturing or design, they are suitable for means of

these tests.

Each fuel tank will be mounted to a crash wall and

impacted on its bottom face by an impact cart with a rigid

impactor at a prescribed velocity. The first set of tests is

designed to measure the deformation behavior of the fuel tanks.

These tests are planned to result in puncture of the bottom

surface of each fuel tank. The preliminary tests are targeted for

October 2013 at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC)

in Pueblo, Colorado.

Following this first series of impact tests, a second set of

dynamic impact tests is planned to be conducted. This second

set will include both blunt and raking impact conditions on

conventional fuel tanks, DMU fuel tanks and fuel tanks

incorporating improved strategies for impact protection.

Lessons learned during the preliminary two tests will be

applied during the second set of tests to improve the

performance of those tests. Fuel tank research is being

performed to determine strategies for increasing the fuel tank

impact resistance to mitigate