ADVANCED DESIGN TECHNOLOGY FOR RAIL TRANSPORTATION VEHICLES

This is an interim report on a cooperative research project between Washington University and AMCAR Division of ACF Industries Inc. The purpose of the project is development of a new finite element stress analysis capability which is more cost effective and better suited for fatigue life evaluation than existing finite element computer programs. The report contains a general outline of the method, description of the algorithm structure and methods by which the computational efficiency can be further increased. A benchmark problem established by experimentation and by computation using an existing finite element computer program (STARDYNE) is presented.