Abstract
For the reliable simulation-based fatigue design of railway vehicles, the operation conditions and resulting loads over the lifespan of the vehicle have to be considered. After introducing the relevant fatigue loads on the vehicle and the methods for modelling the fatigue damage, this work aims at analysing the influence of the operating conditions and loads on the damage using sensitivity analysis. Two approaches are studied: the variance-based sensitivity analysis of the loads acting on the car body and the influence of different operating conditions using statistical values per track section. The loads are obtained from multi-body simulations and the damage is estimated using both physical FE-models and meta-models. The performances of linear regression models and polynomial chaos models are evaluated. The proposed sensitivity analysis is applied to the highspeed train being developed in the Next Generation Train (NGT) project at DLR and will serve as a basis for the virtual design and reliability analysis.
Highlights
Car bodies of railway vehicles are in general designed and dimensioned based on static equivalent loads as defined in EN 12663-11 for extraordinary and operating loads and in EN 152272 for collision scenarios
The stresses are evaluated at a defined distance to the weld using interpolation of the element stresses. They are transformed in the local weld coordinate system and scaled using weld specific notch factors which have been identified from detailed Finite Element (FE) models and are available in the Femfat data base
For a reliable simulation-based fatigue design, the influence of loading and structural parameters on the life span is of crucial interest
Summary
Car bodies of railway vehicles are in general designed and dimensioned based on static equivalent loads as defined in EN 12663-11 for extraordinary and operating loads and in EN 152272 for collision scenarios. Real dynamic excitations during operating are not considered. The used equivalent static loads may not be representative and adapted to today’s vehicles and operating conditions. Current work at DLR tends to develop a virtual design process for car bodies of lightweight railway vehicles, based on real operating loads. Uncertainties in the load conditions have to be considered so that acceptably low failure probabilities can be guaranteed. Uncertainties may appear in the suspension parameters of the vehicle modifying the dynamic responses as well as the material properties of the car body structure, in particular the weld seams
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