Experimental investigation of the quasi-static and impact tests on the energy absorption characteristics of coupler rubber buffers used in railway vehicles

Abstract

Coupler rubber buffers are widely used in high-speed trains, to dissipate the impact energy between vehicles. The rubber buffer consists of two groups of rubbers, which are pre-compressed and then installed into the frame body. This paper specifically focuses on the energy absorption characteristics of the rubber buffers. Firstly, quasi-static compression tests were carried out for one and three pairs of rubber sheets, and the relationship between the energy absorption responses, i.e. Eabn = n × Eab1, Edissn = n × Ediss1, and Ean = Ea1, was obtained. Next, a series of quasi-static tests were performed for one pair of rubber sheet to investigate the energy absorption performance with different compression ratios of the rubber buffers. Then, impact tests with five impact velocities were conducted, and the coupler knuckle was destroyed when the impact velocity was 10.807 km/h. The results of the impact tests showed that with the increase of the impact velocity, the Eab, Ediss, and Ea of the rear buffer increased significantly, but the three responses of the front buffer did not increase much. Finally, the results of the impact tests and quasi-static tests were contrastively analyzed, which showed that with the increase of the stroke, the values of Eab, Ediss, and Ea increased. However, the increasing rates of the impact tests were higher than that of the quasi-static tests. The maximum value of Ea was 68.76% in the impact tests, which was relatively a high value for the vehicle coupler buffer. The energy capacity of the rear buffer for dynamic loading was determined as 22.98 kJ.

Numerical Optimization for the Impact Performance of a Rubber Ring Buffer of a Train Coupler

“…As the ratio of the constitutive parameter C 01 /C 10 of the rubber ring increased, the peak force of the rubber ring increased, and the specific energy absorption SEA showed a slow decreasing trend. The proxy model equations for the specific energy absorption and maximum peak force of the rubber ring are shown in (18) and (19) maximum peak force of the rubber ring are shown in (18) and (19). To simplify the equation, C01/C10 = L:…”

“…The strength and energy absorption capacity of the material increase with the increase of the strain rate. Yao et al [19] studied the quasi-static and impact energy absorption characteristics of railway vehicle rubber buffers by using quasi-static tests and drop-weight tests. Zhang et al [20] analyzed the energy absorption value of rubber materials under a dynamic impact load.…”

Crashworthiness analysis of a multi-layered bi-directionally corrugated steel plates structure

“… 1 – 4 In the past few decades, researchers and engineers devoted to developing lightweight design to achieve better energy absorption capacity. 5 , 6 Corrugated arrangement is a good choice for lightweight structure design and have attracted much attention in recent years. 1 , 7 – 9 The application of corrugated design is not only limited on metal materials but can be used for composites to improve the mechanical property.…”