Simulation Analysis of a Multiple-Vehicle, High-Speed Train Collision Using a Simplified Model

Suchao Xie,Weilin Yang,Ping Xu

doi:10.1155/2018/9504141

Abstract

To solve the problems associated with multiple-vehicle simulations of railway vehicles including large scale modelling, long computing time, low analysis efficiency, need for high performance computing, and large storage space, the middle part of the train where no plastic deformation occurs in the vehicle body was simplified using mass and beam elements. Comparative analysis of the collisions between a single railway vehicle (including head and intermediate vehicles before, and after, simplification) and a rigid wall showed that variations in impact kinetic energy, internal energy, and impact force (after simplification) are consistent with those of the unsimplified model. Meanwhile, the finite element model of a whole high-speed train was assembled based on the simplified single-vehicle model. The numbers of nodes and elements in the simplified finite element model of the whole train were 63.4% and 61.6%, respectively, compared to those of the unsimplified model. The simplified whole train model using the above method was more accurate than the multibody model. In comparison to the full-size finite element model, it is more specific, had more rapid computational speed, and saved a large amount of computational power and storage space. Finally, the velocity and acceleration data for every car were discussed through the analysis of the collision between two simplified trains at various speeds.

Highlights

With the development of railway transportation and the increases in train speeds, attention has been paid to the safety of train operations
The probability of a collision between railway vehicles is small, once it happens, significant losses will be induced due to the trains running at high speeds and high kinetic energy [1,2,3]
Extensive studies have been conducted on the crashworthiness of trains, as characterised by their energy absorption, they merely focus on the car-body design of a single vehicle [4,5,6,7,8,9]

Summary

Introduction

With the development of railway transportation and the increases in train speeds, attention has been paid to the safety of train operations. The dynamic nonlinear finite element method (FEM) can describe the system using various elements and nodes and has been used in detailed modelling of vehicle structures [22] As it is capable of providing detailed information regarding the structural deformation, the strength, and distribution of stress and strain over the whole vehicle body, it has been widely applied in the analysis of vehicle collisions. Meran et al [23] performed a full-scale finite element simulation of passenger cars and demonstrated the effectiveness of a crush zone in improving crashworthiness They pointed out that modelling of the whole train set was necessary to evaluate and verify stability, the level of deceleration, wheel-lift, and the strength of the car body. Concerning studies on the finite element based crashworthiness prediction of railway vehicles, Tang et al [24] proposed a data-driven train crash modelling method to improve computational speed. This research mainly investigated such a simplified model of a train collision

Materials and Methods

Multiple-Vehicle Collision Analysis

Findings

Conclusions