Citation

Xie S, Zhou H. Int. J. Crashworthiness 2014; 19(6): 555-566.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/13588265.2013.832471

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Based on the characteristic of subway vehicles, the design concept of crashworthy subway vehicle was proposed and the energy-absorbing process of the head car (HC) impact was divided into four steps: the first step is the buffer of the coupler draft gear, the second is the deformable collapsible tube, the third is the coupler shear bolts and the last is the energy-absorption structures. According to the impact analysis of a square thin-walled structure, the energy-absorption structures were designed. Through the impact simulation of the designed structure, it clearly shows that steady and ordered plastic deformation occurs on the structure from anticipative part, and the impact force is relatively steady. During the process of impacting, the structures can absorb 471.68 kJ energy, which is far more than the 271.27 kJ impact energy that should be absorbed by the HC when an AW0 loading train at 25 kph strikes another stationary AW0 loading train. The law researches on the designed structures show that their energy-absorbing properties are only closely related to the structural inherent attributes, which indicates that they can be greatly applied to subway vehicles. Finally, from the correlative analysis between impacting experiment and numerical simulation, it is indicated that the validity and reliability of numerical simulation are verified by the experiment, and it is feasible to design and optimise the energy-absorption structures through numerical calculation.