An investigation on deformation behaviors of energy absorbers for passenger coaches

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.