TY - JOUR
T1 - Design and optimization of Metallic Foam Shell protective device against flying ballast impact damage in railway axles
AU - Epasto, Gabriella
AU - Distefano, Fabio
AU - Gu, Linxia
AU - Mozafari, Hozhabr
AU - Linul, Emanoil
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partially funded by a grant of the Romanian Ministery of Research and Innovation, project number 10PFE/16.10.2018, PERFORM-TECH-UPT—The increasing of the institutional performance of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara by strengthening the research, development and technological transfer capacity in the field of “Energy, Environment and Climate Change”, within Program 1—Development of the national system of Research and Development, Subprogram 1.2-Institutional Performance-Institutional Development Projects—Excellence Funding Projects in RDI, PNCDI III”. The authors are grateful to colleague Dr. Jaroslav Kováčik from the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava) for the preparation of foam panels.
Funding Information:
This research was partially funded by a grant of the Romanian Ministery of Research and Innovation, project number 10PFE/16.10.2018, PERFORM-TECH-UPT—The increasing of the institutional performance of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara by strengthening the research, development and technological transfer capacity in the field of “Energy, Environment and Climate Change”, within Program 1—Development of the national system of Research and Development, Subprogram 1.2-Institutional Performance-Institutional Development Projects—Excellence Funding Projects in RDI, PNCDI III”. The authors are grateful to colleague Dr. Jaroslav Kováčik from the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava) for the preparation of foam panels. The raw data required to reproduce the findings of this work cannot be shared at this time as the data also forms part of an ongoing study. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - Ballast impacts can initiate surface defects that cause abrupt failure of the axle and derailment of the railway vehicle. According to the Federal Railroad Administration the axle and bearing failure costs around 89 million dollars and causes 46 derailments in the US per year (2005–2010). In this study, the authors have suggested a novel protective mechanism (Metallic Foam Shell – MFS) by using a lightweight sandwich panel. At the first step, a preliminary study is conducted, followed up by the numerical simulations to determine the applicable materials. At the next step, experimental tests were performed to assess the efficiency of the suggested device against flying ballast impacts. An extended non-destructive (NDT) evaluation has been performed in order to find the most suitable technique for damage detection of the proposed device when on-service. The studied cases were GFRP and Aluminium sandwich panels, having an aluminium foam core with different densities and thicknesses. The results showed that the MFS can absorb up to 90% of the initial impact energy and significantly decrease the chance of rebounding impact to the other components. Moreover, the results were also analysed in order to propose the most reliable NDT method for this specific application.
AB - Ballast impacts can initiate surface defects that cause abrupt failure of the axle and derailment of the railway vehicle. According to the Federal Railroad Administration the axle and bearing failure costs around 89 million dollars and causes 46 derailments in the US per year (2005–2010). In this study, the authors have suggested a novel protective mechanism (Metallic Foam Shell – MFS) by using a lightweight sandwich panel. At the first step, a preliminary study is conducted, followed up by the numerical simulations to determine the applicable materials. At the next step, experimental tests were performed to assess the efficiency of the suggested device against flying ballast impacts. An extended non-destructive (NDT) evaluation has been performed in order to find the most suitable technique for damage detection of the proposed device when on-service. The studied cases were GFRP and Aluminium sandwich panels, having an aluminium foam core with different densities and thicknesses. The results showed that the MFS can absorb up to 90% of the initial impact energy and significantly decrease the chance of rebounding impact to the other components. Moreover, the results were also analysed in order to propose the most reliable NDT method for this specific application.
KW - Ballast impact behaviour
KW - Finite element analysis
KW - Non-destructive evaluation
KW - Protective sandwich structure
KW - Railway axle
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85090560916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85090560916&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.matdes.2020.109120
DO - 10.1016/j.matdes.2020.109120
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090560916
SN - 0264-1275
VL - 196
JO - International Journal of Materials in Engineering Applications
JF - International Journal of Materials in Engineering Applications
M1 - 109120
ER -