Analysis of Railway Vehicle End Protection
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Date
2017-12
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ethiopia is building a modern and reliable railway transportation industry to fulfill the needs of transportation system, in which one of the main considerations in building the railway transportation system is safety of the passenger and driver’s crew.
This thesis will attempt to redesign and improve the railway vehicle end protection, for the safety of passenger and drivers crew.
General existing vehicle end protection design has been reviewed to identify candidate equipment for the passenger cab.
This review shows that the use of shear bolts is the most common approach to pushback coupler trigger mechanism. Ribbed anti-climbers are the most common approach in providing the interlock between colliding vehicles in the event of collision.
The passenger vehicle end protection system includes pushback coupler, energy absorber and anti climber. Pushback mechanism triggered by shear bolt shear mechanism. Energy absorber is used to absorb energy that developed during collision and anti-climber is used to prevent the vehicle overriding or climbing during collision scenario.
The entire structure of design is designed to withstand a vertical load of 890 KN before and during crushing scenario. The entire system absorbs energy up to 3.4 KJ. The evaluation and comparison of the vehicle end protection show that the design satisfies collision requirement. The result from the answer shows that the new designs for the vehicle end protection have better strength to withstand the load during crushing scenario. Finally, the thesis recommends that tests should be carried out in future to verify and this thesis.
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Keywords
Passenger railway vehicle end protection, pushback coupler, Anti-climber, energy Absorber, Overriding, Vehicle crashworthiness, Safety