Crash Zone Development for Railway Vehicle

This paper considers crash zone development for railway vehicle to improve it’s crashworthiness characteristics. The principle of modification is by weakening the crash zone area and strengthening the passenger area. Thus the huge impact energy during collision will be absorbed by crash zone area so that it will maintain the structural integrity of the passengers. There are two type of modifications proposed in this study. The first modification is conducted by weakening the end-under-frame section and strengthening the middle-under-frame section. These modification shows deformation characteristics improvement where the passenger area structure are not suffered from buckling and plastic deformation as expected. The second type of modification is full modification on end-under-frame. These modifications give better improvement on the deformation and energy absorption characteristics, however in the practical application, this will be more expensive option.