Parametric Studies on the Fatigue Life Improvement of Passenger Rail Vehicle Axlebox House
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2015-03
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Failure of passenger rail axlebox house is mainly due to fatigue caused by repeated cyclic
loading which cause catastrophic mechanical failure on axleboxes house and bearing assemblies.
The general objective of this thesis is to improve the fatigue life of passenger rail vehicle axlebox
house by studding influential geometry and fatigue strength factor parameters on the fatigue life
of the axlebox house. Primary data such as bogie type and application, axle load, axle journal
size, bearing type and size are selected and analysed for modelling the geometry. In addition to
primary data, secondary data such as material data, boundary condition, loading data are required
for the input of ANSYSI software analysis. Four geometry types are modelled with SolidWorks
based on the axlebox house design principles then all models are analysed with FEM ANSYS
Workbench 14 fatigue tools under the same non-proportional loading, equivalent dimension and
the same material property to investigate which model has a longer fatigue life. This thesis shows
by improving the fatigue strength factor can improve the life up to 50% and suitable axlebox
house geometry selection can improve the fatigue life up to 70% and it is found that Model II
and Model IV have better fatigue life other than other models. Improving the fatigue strength
factor and geometry parameters such us geometry model, notches and groves improve the fatigue
life of the axlebox house and as the result early failure, operation and maintenance cost, time and
risk to catastrophic accident will be minimized. The thesis also recommends that the mass of the
heavier models could be farther improved and advanced research on site to be conducted in
consideration to environmental factor, microstructure, manufacturing processes, thermal effects,
etc since those factors do also have an impact on the fatigue life of the axlebox house.
Description
Keywords
Fatigue, Non-proportional loading, Fatigue strength factor, Microstructure, Thermal effect