A Study on the Durability Improvement of the Connection Passage Assembly for Railway Vehicles

The connection passage assembly in this study is a double wrinkled neoprene rubber bellows to accept various deviations between the carriage end parts of the articulated type railway vehicle. The fatigue failure of the bellows has a harmful effect on the riding comfort of passengers due to the increase in noise and ringing in the ears from the air-tightness failure while passing through a long tunnel. The non-linear properties of the rubber material are determined by uniaxial tension and equi-biaxial tension test. Moreover, the effects of the angular displacements are evaluated by the results of non-linear analysis. From the results, one of the severe loading conditions for the connection is the mixed mode (rolling & yawing) angular displacement which occurs whilst passing through the small-radius curved siding track of the railway vehicle depot. A repeated mixed mode block fatigue test of the component was constructed to examine the durability. Fatigue life of the original model from the rig test shows to be 189,923 cycles. Furthermore, topology optimization of the cross-section has increased the fatigue life to 574,918 cycles.