Rectangular Crash Boxes Implementation on Impact Energy Absorbing System for Lightweight Rail Vehicle Application

As a form of transportation mode, railway vehicle must be able to protect passengers from fatalities while accidents occur. For that purpose, some parts of the vehicle are designed to dissipate impact energy and to guarantee passengers protection. This paper presents study on the performance improvement of impact energy absorbing system on light rail transit (LRT) by implementing an array of rectangular column crash boxes system. Numerical simulations were carried out with finite element method in order to evaluate response of the structures subjected to axial impact loads based on the International regulation, UIC/EN 15227. The crashworthiness performance of proposed design was then compared to those of the baseline system which used C-channel crash boxes. The systems performance indicators are the weight reduction and crashworthiness parameters. The simulations results showed that the proposed design is better since it is 42 kg lighter and from 5 crashworthiness parameters, 4 are improved.