Research is underway to develop strategies for maintaining the structural integrity of railroad tank cars carrying hazardous materials during collisions. Focused are the four design functions blunting the impact load, absorbing the collision energy, strengthening the commodity tank and controlling the load path into the tank. A key goal for the new design is the ability to contain its lading at four times the impact energy of the baseline equipment. Presently, a preliminary design has been developed that will incorporate these four functions together. It features a conventional commodity tank with external reinforcements to strengthen the tank which is situated on a structural foam cradle, within an external carbody. This carbody has been designed utilising welded steel sandwich panels. The body is designed to take all of the inservice loads, removing the commodity tank from the load path during normal operations. Additionally, the carbody panels will serve as an energy-absorbing mechanism in the event of a collision. Preliminary steps for fabricating and assembling the new tank car design have been outlined. These steps were developed with the intention of paralleling existing tank car fabrication process as much as is practical. Using finite element analysis software, the improved design has been analysed for its response to an impact by a rigid punch. Simulations of two generalised impact scenarios have been made and results are presented. These results show that an improved-design tank car can contain the commodity for a head impact with eight times the energy of the baseline car, and four times the energy for a shell impact.


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    Title :

    Update on ongoing tank car crashworthiness research: Predicted performance and fabrication approach


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2008


    Size :

    11 Seiten, 24 Bilder, 3 Tabellen, 14 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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