Structural safety of trams in case of misguidance in a switch

Abstract

Tram vehicles mainly operate on street tracks where sometimes misguidance in switches occurs due to unfavourable conditions. Generally, in this situation, the first running gear of the vehicle follows the bend track while the next running gears continue straight ahead. This leads to a constraint that can only be solved if the vehicle's articulation is damaged or the wheel derails. The last-mentioned situation is less critical in terms of safety and costs. Five different tram types, one of them high floor, the rest low floor, were examined analytically. Numerical simulation was used to determine which wheel would be the first to derail and what level of force is needed in the articulation area between two carbodies to make a tram derail. It was shown that with pure analytical simulation, only an idea of which tram type behaves better or worse in such a situation can be gained, while a three-dimensional computational simulation gives more realistic values for the forces that arise. Three of the four low-floor tram types need much higher articulation forces to make a wheel derail in a switch misguidance situation. One particular three-car type with two single-axle running gears underneath the centre car must be designed to withstand nearly three times higher articulation forces than a conventional high-floor articulated tram. Tram designers must be aware of that and should design the carbody accordingly.