Dynamic compression tests of aluminum-alloy structure for railway vehicle considering shear fracture

Abstract

Although the number of accidents at level crossings in Japan has been decreasing annually, there is still possibility of such accidents to occur due to wrong-way entry. Therefore, it is essential to study the crashworthiness of rail vehicles in level-crossing accidents. Given that there are many possible collision scenarios for such accidents, it is useful to perform a comprehensive analysis of these scenarios. To investigate the crushing characteristics of a double-skinned aluminum-alloy car body structure for a conventional railway line, we conducted impact compression tests. The impact condition compresses the overall specimen's end face (overall compression condition) and part of its end face (local compression condition). The results of the impact compression tests were as follows. Buckling was the main cause of failure in the overall compression condition, whereas shear crushing was the main cause of failure in the local compression condition. Finite Element Method (FEM) analysis was also conducted in which several material rupture laws were used and compared with the test results. No appropriate solution could be obtained when the equivalent plastic strain was used as a threshold, whereas the results of analyses using the ESI-Wilkins-Kamoulakos (EWK) model showed good agreement with those of the experiments in both compression conditions.