Crashworthiness Analysis And Optimization Of A Light-Rail Train

The world today is a new period of great development of railway, the speed of the train is increased which will impact the accident more serious with the development of science and technology. So the priority is to solve the collision safety of railway vehicles. A large deformation of light rail vehicle for crash simulation analysis is done based on numerical simulation using PAM-CRASH in this paper, while Multidisciplinary optimization strategy used to achieve to ensure the safety of the structure optimization of energy absorption.Firstly, wall thickness and gradient distribution of material properties have been studied to determine influence on structural crashworthiness by using multi-cell cross-section as a vector. General impact of axial impulsive at thin-walled tube to wall thickness is obtained by axial impulsive numerical simulation of thin-walled tube model with different thickness. Result of gradient material distribution design on thin-walled tube shows that the composite structure has more advantages both at crashworthiness side and cost side compare to traditional thin-walled energy absorbing structure which operating by set notch to guide to plastic buckling.Secondly, a suitable highly non-linear finite element model is established according to the structural characteristics of light rail car body, the plastic deformation of the major components and body parts in the collision is analyzed based on the simulation results of the collision of two trains, so the absorption between vehicle and vehicle, the impact force, time, speed, acceleration and a series of changes of parameters are analyzed to propose the improvement plan.Thirdly, the thin-walled tube energy-absorbing structures have been installed to the light rail car body, and a crash simulation is analyzed to compare the degree of deformation, acceleration, energy and force with non-energy-absorbing structure, to analyze energy-absorbing structure on the impact of the light rail vehicle body collision performance.Finally, PAM-CRASH is integrated with the multi-disciplinary optimization software iSIGHT on the basis of the numerical analysis, the reasonable energy absorbing structure parameters are determined in order to achieve maximum energy absorption, the minimum goal of impact force under the premise of the safety of personnel which based on appropriate optimization algorithm.