Structural weakness of a rail vehicle in terms of crashworthiness lies in buckling or bending of the components and the vehicle. With long-thin shapes and opening cross-sections, components are unable to resist bending or torsion moments and buckling deformation is easily produced. To obtain a low centre of gravity and avoid interference with bogies, the draft sill of an automatic coupler vehicle is designed as a changing cross-section along its axis in longitudinal direction. This shape is poor in its' resistance to downward pitch and bending moments. Whole structural based bending may be induced by collapses of components. A bending of vehicle end structure reduces their energy absorption capability and may induce some hazardous consequences, in essence overriding when bending in pitch direction and derailment when bending in yaw direction. The above buckling or bending weaknesses are caused by the different requirements of impact loads and service loads. Impact of rail vehicles is a deformation-based phenomenon and structural deformation stability is a key factor to crashworthiness performance of the vehicle. This is different from the phenomenon in service loads, where stresses of a vehicle structure are designed within material yield limits and thus structural deformation of the vehicle is stable. Therefore, vehicle structural design should be measured from both stress-based performance and deformation-strain-based behaviour to suit the requirements from both service loads and impact loads.


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