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- 2020 (15) (entfernen)
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- Englisch (15)
Schlagworte
- Rail damage (2)
- Road tankers (2)
- Assess (1)
- BLEVE (1)
- Bogie design (1)
- Bogie´s yaw friction (1)
- Bogie´s yaw stiffness (1)
- Carburizing (1)
- Center of gravity shifting (1)
- Centre plate (1)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
Wheel forces generate stresses in the rail as a function of several vehicle and infrastructure characteristics and operating conditions. The different components of the wheel forces develop strains in the rail which contain an elastic and hysteretic (irreversible) components. The irreversible deformations of the rail would be associated with locomotive energy losses. In this paper, a testing facility is proposed to indirectly characterize the level of stresses in the rail, in terms of the energy that is lost during tuming maneuvers. Different potentially influential factors are considered, including the friction at the Center plate, the wheelbase length, the distance between bogies and the radius of the curved track. The change
in the potential energy during a U-turn displacement is measured. In this respect, an experimental model under this operating principle, aimed at validating such a principle of Operation, reveals a significant effect of the friction at the center plate on the energy lost during turning maneuvers, and consequently, on the level of stresses in the rail.
In spite that transport activities do not represent the biggest contributor of pollutants emissions, their reduction has been a priority as some other externalities are associated to such emissions and to the transport itself. A crucial element to characterize the behavior of the vehicles against the environment are the losses that such vehicles exhibit in a passive way, that is, without any involvement of power conditions. The energy loses due to the rolling, the drag and to the friction in mechanical components, have been assessed so far in terms of the stopping acceleration when the vehicle idles on a ramp. However, such a testing procedure produces some uncertainties due to the dynamic conditions that are considered. To avoid such critical limitations, in this paper a testing procedure and facility are proposed, which are based on static conditions of the vehicle at the initiation and at the ending of the test, which are assumed to provide a better reliability to the testing. Some preliminary theoretical analysis should be made in order to validate the operational principles proposed herein for such testing facility.
Different approaches have been attempted so far to reduce fuel consumption and linked pollutants, including vehicle equipment and design, with rational driving style being recognized as a potential source of fuel savings. However, no specific methodology had been suggested so far to assess fuel economy of driving other than the fuel consumed itself. In this paper, the Standard deviation of driving acceleration has been found to be directly associated to fuel consumption, so that the less dispersion of the driving acceleration, produces the lower fuel consumptions and emissions. Such metric could be thus used to assess driving style.
Exposure of pressure vessels to fire can result in catastrophic explosion and escalation of accidents. The safe transportation of cargo in pressure vessels therefore requires knowledge of what will happen to the cargo in the event of a vehicle derailment or rollover resulting in fire exposure. The chapter presents an overview of selected testing and modelling work undertaken to understand the thermohydraulic processes within a vessel that drive pressurization during fire. A series of experiments highlighting the importance of adequate design and selection of protection systems are summarized. It is concluded that pressure relief alone is typically insufficient to prevent vessel rupture, but the combination of relief and thermal coatings can be effective.
The efficiency and safety of railway transportation depend both on numerous factors linked to the vehicle, the infrastructure, the operator and the environment. Curved tracks are subjected to demanding situations due to elevated stress levels, as a function of the operating conditions and vehicle/infrastructure design. In such segments, steering forces are superimposed to lateral load transfers. The steering forces depend on the condition and the design of the centre plate and bogies’ suspensions design. While the friction at the centre plate provides the needed damping to mitigate the hunting vibration of the bogie in straight track segments, such yaw resistance originates high steering forces and rail damage on curved tracks. A centre plate with low friction at turns and high friction at straight track segments would thus be highly advantageous. In this paper, a centre plate design is proposed which provides a yaw-rotation resistance torque that depends on the bogie-car relative position. Two different designs are considered for that purpose, one that combines a spring-acted centring mechanism with a lower pair kinematics, while the other one involves higher kinematic pairs which should incorporate lateral damping elements. As a result of using an engineering design approach, the higher kinematic pairs-based design is recommended however, the validation of such operational principles, including the introduction of the needed damping, should be configured on the basis of experimental models.
Turning maneuvers originate higher forces exerted on the rail and the loss of locomotive energy, at a rate that is function of several parameters that influence the magnitude of the developed horizontal wheel-rail forces, including the friction at the centre plate and the bogie´s yaw stiffness. However, such a friction at the contact surfaces of the centre plate is needed to mitigate the Hunting phenomenon when the train moves on straight track segments. In this paper, a self-centering centre plate is proposed, consisting of a lubricated centre plate, equipped with a spring- and damper-based self-centering mechanism. Simulation results of the proposed mechanism suggest that the energy performance in turns of a train car equipped with such self-centering centre plate is comparatively better, as the peak friction forces linked to the dry friction at the contact surfaces of current centre plate designs, are avoided. The assessment of the hunting performance of the proposed device in straight track segments is proposed as the continuation of this work.
A facility is proposed in this paper to apply a selective carburizing process to the lateral faces of a railways´ head, aiming to increase its carbon content and to decrease the friction coefficient in case that the flange of the railway car wheel gets in contact with the rail during turning. Such a treatment would reduce the energy that is lost during the turning maneuvers performed by the vehicle, further improving the energy efficiency of the railway car. The facility consists of a furnace, which should be set next to the rails´ hot-rolling facility, in order to use the available enthalpy. The proposed furnace is equipped with what is necessary to avoid the decarbonization of the remaining rail material, based upon batteries of oxy-acetylene burners that are installed at the bottom of the furnace, on the opposite side to the carburizing surface. An experimental facility is necessary to validate the operational principles for the equipment proposed in this paper. On the other hand, a study should also be carried out to assess the effect of any rail welding process on the carburized surfaces.
Vehicle’s components damage
(2020)
The failure of vehicle’s suspension components has contributed to road crashes, while their defective operation can deteriorate the fuel efficiency of the vehicles. In this context, and when compared with solid cargo transporters, the road tankers would tend to produce larger roll forces during turning, as the curved shape of the liquid cargo container, shifts upwards the centre of gravity of the cargo. With reference to a rectangular cargo container representing the solid cargo situation, the increase in the position due to elliptical and circular tank shapes, can attain a value of 17% (100% fill, circular tank). In this study, experimental results comparing the lateral load transfer due to solid and liquid cargoes, indicate that the average force increase on the vehicle’s load-receiver side due to a liquid cargo, is 4.3%. To analyse the fullscale situation of both situations, that is, the higher position of the centre of gravity and the shifting of the liquid cargo, a simplified model is developed. The outputs from such a model when subjected to realistic operating conditions (speed
and turning radius), suggest that the higher position of the centre of gravity due to using a non-rectangular cargo container generates an average force increase of 4.9% on the side receiving the load transfer. The incorporation of the effect of the liquid cargo, through the simple pendulum analogy, suggests that such an average increases to 6.76%, with a maximum of 8.35% in the case of the elliptical tank at 75% fill level. It is found that the average liquid cargo effect is 5.44%, which should be compared with the 4.3% of the experiments. Road tankers components would thus have a relatively shorter load cycle life than those of the solid cargo trucks.
Several geometrical analytical tools can be used for assessing the potential benefits of any alternative tank shape. The quasistatic evaluation of the cargo-vehicle behavior represents a fast way to objectively determine the roll stability benefits of any potentially new tank shape. In this paper, the geometrical, quasistatic rollover performance of a convex bottom tank shape is compared with that of standard tank shapes, finding that in spite of the lower position of the cargo´s center of gravity in such a tank shape for the un-perturbed condition, it has the same performance as the elliptical tank shape when subjected to Steady lateral acceleration. That as a result of the large cargo´s lateral displacement. Consequently, the combination of a lower center of gravity for the cargo when it is not perturbed, and a Minimum lateral shift due to lateral accelerations inputs, define the conditions for an ideal tank shape.
Regardless of the mode of transportation, directional changes generate greater forces on the infrastructure as a result of the lateral load transfer and of the respective steering forces in the vehicles. In the case of Railway transportation, a concentrated damage occurs in the rail at the initiation of the turning maneuver, whose magnitude depends on the bogie´s yaw stiffness and on the level of friction at its centre plate. To mitigate such rail-damaging effects, some new designs have been proposed and used for the bogies´ wheelset. However, no new designs for the centre plate have been used. In this paper, a review of the causality for the forces arising during Railway Vehicle's turn negotiations, is presented, including the description of a modeling framework to analyze the influential Parameters for determining the magnitude of such forces.