Assessment of road-rail crossing collision derailments on curved tracks

Abstract

Collision incidents involving trains and road vehicles at road-rail crossings are common occurrences, which are fatal and incur significant economic and societal costs. The existing studies of train collision derailments mainly focus on the rail vehicles running on straight tracks, while the derailments induced by train-truck collision at a road-rail crossing in curved tracks are rarely investigated, although such crossings are more common. This paper presents a study of the derailment assessment of passenger trains due to the collision with heavy road trucks stuck across the curved road-rail crossing by means of train-track dynamics simulations. For this purpose, a nonlinear three-dimensional model of a passenger train impacting a road truck stuck on curved tracks is developed based on the multi-body dynamics theory. Sensitivity of key design parameters such as the curve radius, the collision point at the curved track section, and the impact direction between the train and the truck, and their effects on the derailment behaviour of colliding trains are reported. The results show that the derailment potential is higher at smaller radius track and at the circular curves.