FEM DRIVEN DESIGN PROCESS OF INNOVAT IVE INTERMODAL TRUCK – RAIL SOLUTION

A few years ago, the constructors from the Department of Mechanics and Applied Computer Science of the Military University of Technology in Warsaw began to work on the concept of an innovative wagon for truck transportation. The main design goal was to develop a solution which would allow easy load/unload procedure without extensive railway infrastructure changes. The concept of the solution took a form of a special wagon with the moving (rotating) central part. In short, the rotating part acts as a kind of a bridge allowing a truck to move through it during load/unload. During railway operation, this rotating 'bridge' is to become an integrated part of the wagon. Since the design team aimed at very challenging demands of DB1 envelope and usage of standard bogies, the layout of the wagon had to be carefully examined in terms of its overall stiffness. A unique concept of the wagon structure forced a design approach which was rather unusual for the rail industry. Instead of analyzing the almost finally developed, validated in terms of technology, structure (usual approach), numerical simulations had to be included as an immanent part of the design process. Every major design change had to be simulated in order to accurately predict its influence on the whole wagon structure. It should be stressed out that such an approach (mainly multibody [1, 2] and FE analysis [3]), although time consuming, was the only way to access information how design changes would affect wagon's mechanics. Without this knowledge design of the new wagon would not have been possible