Keywords: crash, overriding, buckling, simulation.

Passive safety technology should be given more recognition to provide maximum protection of passengers and limitation of damage to vehicles in collision accidents. In this paper, a three-dimensional collision dynamic model is developed using ADAMS for studying the behaviour of train during collisions, especially for train overriding and lateral buckling.

The trains are treated as lumped-mass sub-systems: carbody, crush zones, trucks and pushback couplers, which are connected by various joints and non-linear springs. The rigid contact forces are considered between adjacent crush zones.

The carbody and crush zone are connected by a non-linear spring representing the structures intended to crush, and so are the couplers and car body. The crash zone is attached to the carbody by a translational joint which forces the crush zone to crush longitudinally. The coupler is attached to the crush zone by a spherical joint, which allows for all rotational motions. The truck is connected to the carbody by two non-linear springs, one revolute joint and one cylindrical joint. The two non-linear springs represent the secondary suspension. The revolute joint and cylindrical joint allow the truck to pitch and yaw relative to the carbody. The truck is attached to the rail by one translational joint providing the longitudinal motion, and four non-linear springs which represent the primary suspension and wheel-rail force. When the truck lateral displacement exceeds the limited region or jump off 15mm from rail, the wheel-rail interaction force becomes zero.

A train collision model consists of four to six identical single-car models. The adjacent couplers are fixed together by a fixed joint. In the case that a collision condition causes the coupler to be exhausted and the crush zone of the coupled cars to come into contact, a rigid contact force is defined between the adjacent crush zones. A friction force is integrated into the contact force to simulate the anti-climber protruding from each crush zone.

The influence of the impact speed and anti-climber on overriding and lateral buckling during collision is studied using a train collision model to impact on a fixed barrier at different speeds. The simulations show that the trend of overriding and lateral buckling between cars becomes more significant with the increase of the impact speed, and the anti-climbers can suppress the overriding and the lateral buckling and prevent separation of the train under a certain speed.

This three-dimensional model can be used to simulate train behaviour in crash accidents, to help stop recurring crash accidents and to determine the cause of train crash accidents.

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