Structural Safety Assessment of Railway Freight Car during Static Loading

The structural strength during static loadings for a carbody of railway container freight car was evaluated to verify the structural strength of newly manufactured carbody. The carbody of freight car was designed with SM490YA steel and stainless steel for the general railway transportation. Prior to the assessment of structural strength, finite element method (FEM) characterization was used for the stress and structural analyses on stress distribution in a carbody of container freight car. The strain gages were attached on the carbody based on the FEM results in order to measure structural strength during static loadings such as vertical and compression loadings. The actual vertical loading test and horizontal compression loading test were conducted, and the results were compared with the previous FEM results. In this investigation, the evaluation method for the structural strength in a structural component has been introduced using several engineering techniques, and experimental and theoretical results were compared.