United States Department of Transportation
i
Performance Efficiency of a Crash Energy Management System
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2007-03-13
[PDF-495.58 KB]
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Abstract:Previous work has led to the development of a crash energy
management (CEM) system designed to distribute crush
throughout unoccupied areas of a passenger train in a collision
event. This CEM system is comprised of crush zones at the
front and rear ends of passenger railcars. With a consist made
up of CEM-equipped cars, the structural crush due to a collision
can be distributed along the length of the train, crushing only
unoccupied areas and improving the train's crashworthy speed
as compared with a conventional train in a similar collision.
This paper examines the effectiveness of one particular
CEM system design for passenger rail cars. The operating
parameters of the individual components of the CEM system are
varied, and this paper analyzes the effects of these variations on
the behavior of the consist during a collision. The intention is
to determine what modifications to the components, if any,
could improve the crashworthiness of passenger railcars beyond
the baseline CEM design without introducing new hazards to
passengers.
A one-dimensional, lumped-mass model of a passenger
train impacting a heavy freight train was used in this
investigation. Using this model of a collision, the force-crush
behavior for each end of each car in the impacting consist was
varied. The same force-crush characteristic was applied to each
car end on the passenger train.
The four components of the CEM system investigated were
the draft gear, pushback coupler, primary energy absorbers, and
occupied volume of the train car. The paper presents selected
parameters of particular interest, such as the strength ratio of the
primary energy absorber to the pushback coupler and the
average strength of the occupied volume.
The objective of this work was to ascertain the sensitivities
of the various parameters on the crashworthy speed and to help
optimize the force-crush characteristic. This investigation
determined that modifications could be made to the baseline
characteristic to improve the train's crashworthy speed without
creating new hazards to occupants.
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