Abstract
An ever-increasing emphasis on providing quality transportation
service and meeting the customer expectations requires that a systems
approach to the design of the freight truck be adopted. To meet these
increasing requirements for better service, the car body and truck need
to be treated as a single system and the freight truck has to be
designed as an integral part of this system. Further, the freight
car/truck design has to be pursued for dynamic performance level
required to provide the ride quality demanded for safe transportation of
a given commodity. The ride quality requirements should include
vertical, lateral, and longitudinal ride quality levels. As an example,
the automobile manufacturers expect that the railroad industry provide a
completely damage-free environment for the transportation of
automobiles. This paper discusses the current practice of freight truck
design for conventional autorack cars and describes the ride quality
provided by today's autorack cars. The paper proposes ride quality
targets for future alternative systems for transporting automobiles.
This target can be used also for current conventional autorack cars. The
alternative systems, besides addressing ride quality, would address
other associated requirements such as in-transit security, ease of
loading/unloading, reduced transit time, reduced handling etc. All the
necessary requirements for a Truck Specification are outlined including
truck inspection, maintenance, repair, life cycle costs, etc. Specific
quantitative requirements for these performance parameters must be set
relative to the performance of today's equipment
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