• Volpe's Work
  • Volpe Subsites
    • Structures and Dynamics Division
      • Projects
      • Publications and Papers
      • Contact SDD
  • Technology Transfer
  • Volpe Technical Experts
  • Volpe Organizational Chart

Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Research

Previous Page

Development of Crash Energy Management Designs for Existing Passenger Rail Vehicles

As part of the design development procedure used to develop a crash energy management coach car crush zone, the following steps are followed: conduct a detailed review of current state-of-the-art designs in use around the world, draft the design, conduct a series of tests on full-scale sub-assemblies, and then modify or finalize the design based upon the results from the tests. An example of one full-scale sub-assembly test is shown in this video. The test was performed at a drop tower facility where the impacting mass was dropped from various heights to obtain defined impact energies. This test was conducted to develop information about the performance of the fixed/sliding sill shear bolt arrangement for triggering the push-back sliding sill into the fixed sill. Several views from a high speed camera show the progression of shear bolt failure and appropriate sliding sill push-back into the fixed sill.

w droptower test video:
Small MPEG (17.2MB)
Large MPEG (41.3MB)
Windows Media (656KB)
View text description of video.

Return to Top