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Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Research

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Design of a Workstation Table with Improved Crashworthiness Performance

This video presents an animation of the occupant response analysis involving two workstation table designs. This work was conducted under the Federal Railroad Administration's Equipment Safety Research program.

The screen is divided into two frames. Each frame shows a simulated passenger railcar interior arrangement consisting of facing seats with an intervening workstation table. A THOR 50th percentile male test dummy is seated in the window seat facing the table. The occupant is subjected to an 8g, 250 millisecond triangular acceleration pulse. The frame on the top shows a table with a rigid edge. The frame on the bottom shows a table with a crushable, energy-absorbing edge. The two scenes are animated simultaneously, and then repeated in slow motion.

In the top animation, the occupant begins to travel towards the left side of the frame. The dummy soon impacts the intervening table at the lower ribcage level of the thorax. This impact causes the occupant to stop abruptly. The head and neck rotate briskly towards the tabletop, and the pelvis and femurs rotate upwards towards the bottom of the table. The upper abdomen of the occupant is compressed to what appears to be one half of its original depth. The occupant then rebounds from the table impact, coming to rest in an upright seating position.

In the bottom animation, the occupant begins to travel towards the left side of the frame at the same rate as in the top animation. Upon impacting the table edge, the animations differ. As the table edge begins to crush, it absorbs the impact of the occupant. The occupant does not come to rest as quickly as in the rigid table case, and the magnitude of head/neck and femur/pelvis motion is not as severe. The table edge crushes to almost the longitudinal centerline of the table. At this point, the maximum compression of the upper abdomen is not as severe as in the rigid table case. The occupant rebounds gradually, and comes to rest leaning over the table.

The animation notes that during an impact with a crushable, energy-absorbing table, the occupant is subjected to reduced chest acceleration, neck loads, upper abdomen compression, and overall injury risk than with a rigid table edge.

View animation of analysis:
Small MPEG (6.71MB)
Large MPEG (16.5MB)
Windows Media (2.17MB)

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