Rail Equipment Crashworthiness Research
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Crashworthiness Analysis of the Placentia, CA Rail Collision
This video shows two simulations from a collision dynamics analysis of a scenario representative of the Placentia, CA rail collision in April 2002. The first simulation depicts the estimated one-dimensional trajectory and structural crush of the rail cars involved. The first scene shows a stationary passenger train at rest on the tracks, which is composed of a cab car in the lead, two coach cars, and a trailing locomotive. A freight train approaches from the left, which consists of three locomotives and four freight cars, the last of which is modified to represent the mass of a larger number of freight cars that were actually present in the collision. As the freight train approaches the standing passenger train, the animation zooms in to observe the detail of the deformation of the cab car. The cab car is broken up into two parts. The front portion represents the portion of the cab car from the rear stairwell forward, and the rear portion represents the balance of the car. When the front portion of the cab car is impacted by the lead freight locomotive, there is a small amount of penetration, and then the entire cab car begins to move to the right. Once the cab car bumps into the trailing cars, the section between the front and rear portions of the cab car begins to crush, which is indicated by an overlapping between the two bodies. There is a total of roughly four feet of crush at this interface. Once the crush is complete, the animation zooms out to show the remaining travel of the conglomeration of the freight and passenger trains until the come to rest together.
The second simulation depicts the estimated lateral deformation from a planar collision dynamics analysis. This animation shows the cab car in the center of the screen, again broken up into two segments (forward and backward of the rear stairwell). The freight locomotive approaches from the upper left corner of the screen. Upon impact with the front of the cab car, the interface between the front and rear portions of the cab car buckles outward towards the upper right portion of the frame. The maximum crush forms roughly a thirty-degree angle between the deformed and non-deformed states of the cab car.
View interior analysis and test video:
Small MPEG (7.5MB)
Large MPEG (18.3MB)
Windows Media (2.3MB)
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