In this paper application of an example FEA/CAE tool (Finite Element Analysis/Computer Aid Engineering (Cosmos®) to the design and analysis of a typical car-truck stand used by the railways is discussed. The car-truck stand consisted of several pieces of A-500 steel tube and A36 steel welded together and is used to support one end of a freight car during maintenance operations. Design of experiments via Taguchi method approach was attempted to evaluate the car-truck stand currently used by the rail industry. Experiments were conducted to validate some of the simulation results. In this study, three parameters were evaluated (overall stand height, material thickness, and stand geometry). The Taguchi method consisted of nine experiments. Each of the nine experiments for each structure was evaluated using the CAE tool. Real experiments were also done on the current design of the stand and a static load test was conducted to validate some of the CAE results. The static test was done by fixing strain gages to the car stand and vertically loading the car stand. The output response which was measured is the safety factor determined from the CAE analyses. All resulted are presented in the form of tables and discussed.
Copyright © 2011 by ASME
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/raghu-echempati/16/
https://dx.doi.org/10.1115/imece2011-63902
Paper No: IMECE2011-63902