Analysis of the mechanical behavior of locomotive collision under lateral/vertical offset attitude of the coupler

Abstract

The locomotive coupler usually adopts semi-permanent non-compact coupler, which has the characteristics of strong yaw attitude compared with the compact coupler of urban railway. The state of the coupler has an extremely strong randomness in influencing the vertical and lateral mechanical behaviors of the vehicle, which directly affects the climbing and derailment risk of the train. In order to study the effects of coupler vertical deflection and lateral deflection on the collision mechanical behavior of locomotive, a modeling method of locomotive collision dynamics under lateral/vertical offset attitude of coupler is presented, and its effectiveness was verified by experiments. Then, the influences of coupler with vertical and lateral deflection on the collision mechanical behavior of locomotive were carried out. Finally, through the construction of surrogate model, the influence law of the lateral/vertical offset attitude of coupler on vehicle body collision was intuitively analyzed, at the same time, the main effect and interaction effect of coupler deflection on the collision response were also analyzed. The results show that the lateral/vertical offset of the couplet seriously affects the posture of vehicle after collision, thereby affecting the energy absorption of the crushing deformation of the energy-absorbing components at the end of the vehicle. The influence of the lateral deflection of the coupler on the energy absorption of the collision is stronger than that of the vertical deflection. The vertical deflection of the coupler has a significant effect on the vehicle climbing and the wheelset lifting, which may lead to vehicle climbing and train derailment in severe cases.