Railway Wagons Research Articles

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Structural Dynamic Analysis of Freight Railway Wagon Using Finite Element Method

This paper describes the development of a virtual freight wagon vehicle using virtual prototyping computer tools. The freight wagon considered as open type wagon “BOXN25” of the Indian Railways. The freight wagon vehicle comprises of car body structure and two bogies. Solidworks is used for modeling the freight wagon and the geometry is exported to finite element tool, ANSYS. A multi degree of freedom system has been reviewed and compared with system having infinite degree of freedom (continuous structure). The current problem falls in the category of large models (Block Lanczos Algorithm is used) and has high degrees of freedom (PCG Solver is used). The structural dynamic response for the virtual freight wagon is determined. It is seen that the car body deformation is influenced by its elastic underframe and sidewalls. The influence of vibration modes, which describe local deflection, on the comfort level and stability of laden goods is discussed. Mode shapes up to a frequency of 30Hz are considered.

Dynamic Measurement of Four-Axle Railway Wagon

This article describes the determination of geometric, mass and stiffness parameters of the individual part of plateau wagon. After measurements were taken the position change of the chassis of the vehicle body and wheel when driving the vehicle over obstacles was observed. The obstacles were formed by wedges. Experimental detection of parameter has been used in the analytical investigation of kinematically excited system of three-body space flexibly stored and linked.

The Geometry of Railway Geometric Overthrow Revisited Using Computer Algebra Methods

There are size standards for railway coaches and freight wagons in order to allow trains to pass from one railway line or even network to another. The maximum size and shape of the rolling stock is denoted gauge. On curves, vehicles sweep a larger path than on straight track. We shall focus on the geometric overthrow of the different kind of rolling stock (the geometric overthrow is that part of the vehicle element offset which is due to the track curve). We shall detail the influence of the kind of vehicle (two axles, classic bogies, shared bogies or Talgo vehicles) in the geometric overthrow. The computations can be easily carried out with a computer algebra system such as Maple and some curious results are obtained (for instance, a negative value (!) is obtained for Talgo coaches).

Emergency railway wagon scheduling by hybrid biogeography-based optimization

Railway transportation plays an important role in many disaster relief and other emergency supply chains. Based on the analysis of several recent disaster rescue operations in China, the paper proposes a mathematical model for emergency railway wagon scheduling, which considers multiple target stations requiring relief supplies, source stations for providing supplies, and central stations for allocating railway wagons. Under the emergency environment, the aim of the problem is to minimize the weighted time for delivering all the required supplies to the targets. For efficiently solving the problem, we develop a new hybrid biogeography-based optimization (BBO) algorithm, which uses a local ring topology of population to avoid premature convergence, includes the differential evolution (DE) mutation operator to perform effective exploration, and takes some problem-specific mechanisms for fine-tuning the search process and handling the constraints. Computational experiments show that our algorithm is robust and scalable, and outperforms some state-of-the-art heuristic algorithms on a set of problem instances.

Researches upon the Maintenance of the Railway Wagons Brake System

It is known that the brake system maintenance of the railway wagons involve also, among others, the replacing of the brake shoes when their wear in time exceeds the maximum allowable limit. This requires creating a reserve of such spare parts in companies carrying out maintenance of such equipments. Management of the stocks needed to be created can be solved by applying various methods, depending on the certainty or uncertainty knowledge of the level necessary for the spare parts demand, of their delivery time and size of supply costs. The company in which researches was conducted did not apply optimization policies for corrective maintenance, in the idea of non-blocking in irrational stocks the company financial resources. So that, the authors propose as a working method, for solving a particular case, a deterministic storage model of the brake shoes with instantaneous supply of this spare parts, when absence in stock may be accepted. The researches result consisted of determining the brake shoes economic batch size and their optimal replenishment period, at minimum total costs. It was also determined, in this case, the minimum required level stock, as well as, its existence time and the absence in stock. Intensity index of the stock split determination will also allow, the brake shoes probability deplation.

Development and Characterization of Nanoclay-Modified Soy Resin-Based Jute Composite as an Eco-friendly/Green Product

This research work focus on the development of jute reinforced biodegradable nano-biocomposite using soy milk as matrix and nanoclay as additive. These composites were characterized for mechanical, dynamic mechanical properties, and moisture sensitivity. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopic (TEM) of the nano-biocomposites were accomplished to study the formation of exfoliated structure of nano-biocomposite. Mechanical and dynamic strength obtained for nanoclay-reinforced jute-soy composites are promising and developed composites might prove an alternative for nondegradable plastic-reinforced composite. Developed composites can be utilized in automotive, packaging, cuboids, railway wagon, and furniture industry as a substitute of plastic composites.

Energy-Efficient Wireless MAC Protocols for Railway Monitoring Applications

Recent advances in wireless sensor networking (WSN) techniques have encouraged interest in the development of vehicle health monitoring (VHM) systems. These have the potential for use in the monitoring of railway signaling systems and rail tracks. Energy efficiency is one of the most important design factors for the WSNs as the typical sensor nodes are equipped with limited power batteries. In earlier research, an energy-efficient cluster-based adaptive time-division multiple-access (TDMA) medium-access-control (MAC) protocol, named EA-TDMA, has been developed by the authors for the purpose of communication between the sensors placed in a railway wagon. This paper proposes another new protocol, named E-BMA, which achieves even better energy efficiency for low and medium traffic by minimizing the idle time during the contention period. In addition to railway applications, the EA-TDMA and E-BMA protocols are suitable for generic wireless data communication purposes. Both analytical and simulation results for the energy consumption of TDMA, EA-TDMA, BMA, and E-BMA have been presented in this paper to demonstrate the superiority of the EA-TDMA and E-BMA protocols.

Traffic Noise Propagating from Vibration of Railway Wagon

Traffic noise has become a serious environmental hazard as more cars are purchased and driven. To help objectively and subjectively reduce perceived noise load, methods to analyze traffic noise offer an important means of creating a design to reduce noise output from main sources and transmission routes. Acoustic analysis using BEASY and dynamic analysis using ANSYS are conducted to forecast noise at a distance of 15 m from a railway wagon travelling at 100 km/h. This noise is based on structural vibration only and it excludes other noise sources from the railway wagon. The simulation results demonstrate that the overall noise at 15 m from a railway wagon car is 85.1 dB(L) from linear energy weighting calculation and 72.9 dB(A) from the A-weighting calculation. In this study, noise level propagating from vibration of the railway wagon is measured or calculated using A-weighting filter to simulate the frequency response of the human ear. The study results can be useful to factories, companies, or organizations and can provide an important resource and help reduce traffic noise. This can be achieved by predetermining the test location and structure configuration and adapting local planning and thus preventing excessive traffic noise in residential areas.

Design Reliability Assessment on the Railway Wagon Axle with 30 Ton Axle Weigh

Design reliability of the railway wagon axle with 30 ton axle weigh is assessed on a basis of the code EN 13103 loads set. Constraint effects of the interference fits between wheels – axle and bearings – axle are taken into account. Integrated wheelset model of finite element method is applied to calculate the axle stresses, in which the rail pieces, wheels, axle, bearings, and adapters are fitted and analyzed together. Results reveal that the maximum stress section is at outer side close to wheel seat, different from the prediction of inner side close to wheel seat by the code analytic method. Under requirement of 3, 000, 000 km and 99 percentage of confidence, the evaluated axle design reliability is 0.9987 if manufacturing by the existent LZ50 axle steel. And if by the material EA1N or EA4T of the code EN 13103, the present design meets also the requirement of the code EN 13103.

Vision system for measuring wagon buffers’ lateral movements

This paper presents a vision system designed for measuring horizontal and vertical displacements of a railway wagon body. The model comprises a commercial webcam and a cooperative target of an appropriate shape. The lateral buffer movement is determined by calculating target displacement in real time by processing the camera image in a LabVIEW platform using free OpenCV library. Laboratory experiments demonstrate an accuracy which is better than ?0.5 mm within a 50 mm measuring range.

Interference Fit Design Assessment and Improvement for the Railway Wagon Wheelset with 30 Ton Axle Weigh

Design reliability is analyzed for the interference fits of the railway wagon wheelset with 30 ton axle weigh. Aim focus on eliminating fretting fatigue damage of the wheelset. An extreme wheelset loads set is deduced by which can yields the thermal mechanical loads on the wheel same to the code AAR S 660. Integrated wheelset model of finite element method is applied to calculate the stresses on the fits to consider the physical fit relationship of wheelset, in which the rail pieces, wheels, axle, bearings, and adapters are fitted together by contact phases. It is revealed that the fits are all in the press stress states for the original design. But the stresses seem smaller than the least reasonable value for the reliable fits between wheels-axle. An improvement suggestion is provided to rise the fit scale to 0.23 mm equal to 0.01 percentage of the wheel-hub hole diameter. Calculation results verify that the press stresses have been controlled in the reasonable range.

The Design of Railway Wagon Anti-Theft System Based on the CC2430

This paper proposed a railway wagon anti-theft system based on ZigBee technology. The system was consisted of Handheld device, Router and End device. The Handheld device was mainly used for the configuration of the net and initialization. The Router was used to relay the message between the Handheld device and End device. The End device was a monitoring node. The CC2430 microprocessor was the controller of the system. The magnetic sensor was used to monitor the status of the wagon door. The alarm information would be transmitted to the Handheld device to display and alarm. RFID technology was used to mark the number of train carriages. In addition, GPRS module was used for transmitting the wagon information to the remote PC, and finishing wireless long-distance monitor. The experiments verify the reliability of the system. It is proved that the system has a certain application value.

Data Mining on Index of Static Load of Freight Cars

Static load of freight vehicles is one of the important indices to evaluate the efficiency of railway wagon usage, as well an important basis for predicting coefficient of static load in railway line design. Based on sorting out the data structure of static load, clustering algorithm of K-medorids is employed for data mining to find the significant and relatively stable classification characteristics between static load of railway administrations. It is different delivery proportions of heavy goods that are indicated by index factor analysis to cause the static load classification of railway administrations. The data-mining also indicates the differences of static load between different grading railway administrations which cannot be ignored, therefore determining the coefficient of static load in railway design based on divided region is recommended.

Experimental Testing of Impact of Railway Wagons

This article presents a methodology for the experimental testing of impact of the wagons with a special attention on the identification of wave phenomena and influence of sampling frequency on accuracy of the measured data. The impact force, affecting the buffers of Hccrrss wagon, has been captured at different sampling frequencies. The experimental results were compared to the theoretical ones obtained by the numerical simulation of two impact wagons. The wagons are modeled as two homogeneous elastic rods. The output results of such simple model were speed and time of wave propagation through the supporting structure of the tested wagon. They allow identifying and explaining the wave phenomena in results obtained by the experimental testing that must be carried out in process of certifying the wagons in accordance to the international regulations. In order to maximize the accuracy of the measured data, it is recommended to perform the experimental measurement at as high as possible sampling frequency. This methodology ensured a reliable measurement of the impact force on the buffers and identifying the wave phenomena generated through the subjected wagon.

Dynamics of railway wagons subjected to braking torques on defective tracks

It is well known that track defects cause profound effects to the dynamics of railway wagons; normally such problems are examined for cases of wagons running at a constant speed. Brake/traction torques affect the speed profile due to the wheel–rail contact characteristics but most of the wagon–track interaction models do not explicitly consider them in simulation. The authors have recently published a model for the dynamics of wagons subject to braking/traction torques on a perfect track by explicitly considering the pitch degree of freedom for wheelsets. The model is extended for cases of lateral and vertical track geometry defects and worn railhead and wheel profiles. This paper presents the results of the analyses carried out using the model extended to the dynamics of wagons containing less ideal wheel profiles running on tracks with geometry defects and worn rails.

The MultiAgent Forming Stress Analysis and Design of Cold Bending Centre Sill

By means of analyzes the differences of mechanical properties between railway wagon with cold bending centre sill steel and common cold-formed steel, to study the differences resilience by different materials, final this given the forming principle and molding pass of cold bending centre sill. Analysis the stress state of the forming process of cold bending centre sill with multiAgent technology, establish corresponding Agent force model. In determining the basis of forming passes, then determining the deformation per passes and the amount of bended, furthermore realized the forming process of virtual in computer.

Determination of dynamic sizes during the process of impact of railway wagons

The objective of research in this paper refers to the theoretical and experimental determination of dynamic sizes that occur during the process of impact of railway wagons. At the process of wagons impact as well as at the time of changes of movement regime (starting, stopping, and braking), the longitudinal forces that significantly affect the stress-deformational state of the supporting wagon structure occur. In the process of developing and designing new types of wagons and in the process of identifying the behavior of existing types of wagons, it is necessary to know the values of the most important dynamic sizes that occur during the process of impact. In this paper, a method for determining these sizes is formed by using the theoretical models of impact of wagons. Results of numerical simulation of impact are compared with the results of experimental tests, which were conducted according to international regulations. Research has shown that the results of numerical simulations coincide with the results of experimental tests, with certain exceptions. It is concluded that theoretical model can be used in determining the most important dynamic sizes that occur during the process of wagons impact.

STRAIN GAUGE METHOD OF MEASURING STRESS IN LABORATORY MODEL TO TEST SUBASSEMBLIES AND ASSEMBLIES NECESSARY FOR INNOVATIVE DESIGNS OF WAGONS

This article presents the method and way of measuring strain gauge in a laboratory model of a wall of a railway wagon. The article is the first step in the research leading to confirming the possibility of using composite materials as construction materials of assemblies and subassemblies of wagons. The subject of the research is a wall of a wagon made of standard materials.As part of future research, replacing selected elements with composite materials such as glass fibres, carbon fibres and others is proposed. Such action can lead to lowering the weight of a single wagon, resulting in reducing the weight of the whole set of wagons.The results presented are part of the research conducted at the Institute of Process Technology and Integrated Manufacturing Systems of Silesian University within the research and development project with registration number PBR-8/RMT-2/2009.

Predicting Vertical Acceleration of Railway Wagons Using Regression Algorithms

The performance of rail vehicles running on railway tracks is governed by the dynamic behaviors of railway bogies, particularly in cases of lateral instability and track irregularities. To ensure reliable, safe, and secure operation of railway systems, it is desirable to adopt intelligent monitoring systems for railway wagons. In this paper, a forecasting model is developed to investigate the vertical-acceleration behavior of railway wagons that are attached to a moving locomotive using modern machine-learning techniques. Both front- and rear-body vertical-acceleration conditions are predicted using popular regression algorithms. Different types of models can be built using a uniform platform to evaluate their performance. The estimation techniques' performance has been measured using a set of attributes' correlation coefficient (CC), root mean square error (RMSE), mean absolute error (MAE), root relative squared error (RRSE), relative absolute error (RAE), and computational complexity for each of the algorithms. Statistical hypothesis analysis is applied to determine the most suitable regression algorithm for this application. Finally, spectral analysis of the front- and rear-body vertical condition is produced from the predicted data using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) and is used to generate precautionary signals and system status that can be used by a locomotive driver for necessary actions.