In order to improve the fatigue reliability assessment criteria and assessment system for railway freight car, the fatigue and whole vehicle vibration test rig for railway freight car body is designed and built, which consists of electro-hydraulic servo hydraulic system, mechanical structure system, electrical control and safety monitoring system, test data acquisition and processing system and appropriate matching infrastructure, with the load application system by means of vertical, lateral, longitudinal actuators and coupler force actuator on dummy bolster. Based on the core principle of the proposed car body fatigue test (online running state simulation of car body and the accelerated fatigue test), 5 critical technologies are developed including line dynamic response spectrum test for car body fatigue test, test data processing, drive file establishment for test rig, fatigue test and procedure monitoring. Taking the car body fatigue test for C70E type gondola wagon for general purpose in loaded condition for example, after being simulated on the test rig for accumulated 3 142 000 km equivalent total mileage between Beijing and Chengdu, the fatigue reliability of the car body is assessed. Results indicate that, when the drive file is executed repeatedly, the root-mean-square error of car body acceleration is less than 5% and the root-mean-square error of critical point stress is less than 17%. The simulation precision for the online running state of car body meets the requirements for the fatigue test of railway freight car body. The car body of C70E type gondola wagon for general purpose can satisfy the requirement for the design life of 25a. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed test principle and key technologies are verified. © 2017, Editorial Department of China Railway Science. All right reserved.
