An investigation on deformation behaviors of energy absorbers for passenger coaches

Ramazan Özmen, Mustafa Günay

Abstract


Thin-walled structures is used commonly as energy absorbers at the front and back of the coaches. These parts should be designed to minimize the damage to the vehicle and prevent the passengers from fatality and/or injury by absorbing the collision energy in railway transportation. In this paper, deformation behaviors of tube like structures with truncated cone under the axial impact load were investigated by means of finite element analysis (FEA). The energy absorbers having tube like structures were modelled at the same weight and have three different wall thickness and taper angle. As a result of FEA, the performances of straight and truncated cone type energy absorbers were compared in terms of energy absorption capacities and an optimization study was done to determine the effects of thickness and taper angle on energy absorbing performances of the members. The analysis of variance in 95% confidence level was applied in order to determine the effects of design parameters on total efficiency (TE). Besides, optimum design parameters for TE were determined by using Taguchi optimization methodology. Thickness was found as the most significant parameter on total efficiency with 60.52% percentage contribution ratio according to ANOVA results.

Keywords


Energy absorbtion; Finite element analysis; HSLA steel; Truncated tube; Optimization

Full Text:

PDF

References


E. Martinez, DavidTyrell, R. Rancatore, R. Stringfellow, and G. Amar, “A crush zone design for an existing passenger rail cab car,” in Proceedings of 2005 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition, 2004, pp. 85–94.

K. Jacobsen, D. Tyrell, and B. Perlman, “Impact Tests of Crash Energy Management Passenger Rail Cars: Analysis and Structural Measurements,” in ASME 2004 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, 2004, pp. 97–105.

W. Abramowicz and N. Jones, “Dynamic progressive buckling of circular and square tubes,” Int. J. Impact Eng., vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 243–270, 1986.

S. Simunovic, J. Shaw, and G. a Aramayo, “Material Modeling Effects on Impact Deformation of Ultralight Steel Auto Body,” SAE Tech. Pap., no. 724, 2000.

A. A. Nia and J. H. Hamedani, “Comparative analysis of energy absorption and deformations of thin walled tubes with various section geometries,” Thin-Walled Struct., vol. 48, no. 12, pp. 946–954, 2010.

M. Langseth, O. S. Hopperstad, and T. Berstad, “Crashworthiness of aluminium extrusions: validation of numerical simulation, effect of mass ratio and impact velocity,” Int. J. Impact Eng., vol. 22, no. 9–10, pp. 829–854, 1999.

A. Tasdemirci, “The effect of tube end constraining on the axial crushing behavior of an aluminum tube,” Mater. Des., vol. 29, no. 10, pp. 1992–2001, 2008.

R. Gümrük and S. Karadeniz, “The influences of the residual forming data on the quasi-static axial crash response of a top-hat section,” Int. J. Mech. Sci., vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 350–362, 2009.

R. Gümrük and S. Karadeniz, “A numerical study of the influence of bump type triggers on the axial crushing of top hat thin-walled sections,” Thin-Walled Struct., vol. 46, no. 10, pp. 1094–1106, 2008.

G. Chen, X. M. Chen, and M. F. Shi, “Experimental and Numerical Studies of Crash Trigger Sensitivity in Frontal Impact,” SAE Tech. Pap., no. 724, 2005.

A. G. Hanssen, M. Langseth, and O. S. Hopperstad, “Static and dynamic crushing of circular aluminium extrusions with aluminium foam filler,” Int. J. Impact Eng., vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 475–507, 2000.

G. Mayville, R. A., Rancatore, R. J., Stringfellow, R. G., Amar, “Repair of Budd Pioneer Coach Car Crush Zones,” Cambridge, MA, 2007.

D. A. Skobir, “High-strength low-alloy (HSLA) steels,” Mater. Technol., vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 295–301, 2011.

J. Patel, C. Klinkenberg, and K. Hulka, “Hot rolled HSLA strip steels for automotive and construction applications,” Niobium Sci. Technol., no. Grade 100, pp. 647–674, 2001.

R. Mayville, A. D. Little, K. Johnson, and P. Engineering, “The Development of a Rail Passenger Coach Car Crush Zone,” in Proceedings of the 2003 IEEE/ASME Joint Rail Conference, 2003, pp. 1–8.

J. O. Hallquist, LS-DYNA users manual. Livermore, California: Livemore Software Technology Corporation, 1998.

D. Al Galib and A. Limam, “Experimental and numerical investigation of static and dynamic axial crushing of circular aluminum tubes,” Thin-Walled Struct., vol. 42, no. 8, pp. 1103–1137, 2004.

G. Taguchi, S. Chowdhury, Y. Wu, Taguchi's Quality Engineering Handbook, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New Jersey, USA, 2005.

M. Günay, M.E. Korkmaz, Optimization of Honing Parameters for Renewal of Cylinder Liners. GU J Sci 30(1), 111-119, 2017.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21533/pen.v5i3.134

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2017 Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences (PEN)

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

ISSN: 2303-4521

Digital Object Identifier DOI: 10.21533/pen

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License