鉄道車両用防振ゴムの劣化予測

抄録

Recently, the maintenance of rubber isolators for railway vehicles has been basically performed based on Time-Based Maintenance (TBM). Therefore, many rubber products are discarded in usable condition without significant degradation. On the other hand, it is necessary to optimize the usage limits of rubber isolators based on predictions of degradation progression from the perspective of cost, workload, and environmental impact in maintenance. In this research, single link rubber used in environments subject to frequent high loads was selected as rubber isolator to predict degradation, and fatigue tests were conducted for three types of single link rubber insulators with different spring constants. The relationship between “spring constant addition load” and the rate of change of spring constants, calculated using the maximum load, number of shakes, and initial spring constants in fatigue test, showed that spring constants decrease gradually as “spring constant addition load” increases, and after a certain load, the spring constants tend to decrease rapidly. As a result, the rate of change in spring constant for all samples could be regarded as a continuous change. In addition, it was suggested that it is possible to predict when macro-level breaks will occur based on the usage conditions in vehicles and the initial spring constant.