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Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Research

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Impact Tests of Crash Energy Management Passenger Rail Cars: Analysis and Structural Measurements

This video compares footage of the full-scale two-car test of Crash Energy Management (CEM) equipment to a collision dynamics model simulation. The test was conducted on February 26, 2004 at the Technology Transportation Center in Pueblo, Colorado. Two coupled passenger rail cars, retrofitted with a CEM design end structure impacted a rigid fixed barrier at approximately 30 mph.

The first clip shows the collision dynamics model of the test scenario. The primary components of the crush zone are modeled as individual mass-spring components: pushback coupler (red), sliding sill (green), fixed sill (pink) and roof absorbers (yellow). The three views show the full length of the two cars (bottom), a close-up of the impacting end of the first car (top right), and the coupled connection (top left). The lead crush zone triggers first. About midway through the crushing of the primary energy absorbers (green component) the pushback coupler (red component) of the coupled connection begins to crush. Under this collision scenario the first crush zone is nearly exhausted, both couplers of the coupled interfaces have completely pushed back, and the sliding sills have just triggered.

The second segment of the video shows two side-views of the full-scale test: impacting end of the lead car and the coupled interfaces. In the first clip, the cars approach the wall and the coupler contacts first, causing it to push back. The end frame then contacts the wall causing the primary energy absorbers and roof absorbers to crush. This crush zone was fully exhausted and crushed approximately 3 feet. The second view shows the response of the coupled connection. The pushback couplers trigger and push back completely causing the end frames to come together and the anti-climbers to engage. Both sliding sills were triggered; the primary energy absorbers and roof absorbers crushed approximately 10 inches in the rear end of the lead car and approximately 1 inch in the lead end of the trailing car. Approximately 5 feet of crush were distributed between the three crush zones. The vehicles experience minimal lateral and vertical motions.

View analysis and test video:
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Large MPEG (35.9MB)
Windows Media (664KB)
View text description of video.

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