Research in rail vehicles passive safety in VZU Plzen
31. 10. 2011Research and Testing Institute Plzen s.r.o. (hereinafter VZU Plzen - formerly ŠKODA VÝZKUM), as a member of Research Centre of Railway Vehicles (hereinafter VCKV) at the University of West Bohemia, has been solving research tasks in the branch of railway transport almost seven years.
One of those tasks is the Research in rail vehicles passive safety, which belongs to the research activity called “Research of dynamical strength, service durability and passive safety of rail vehicles´ structures and their components”. In VZU Plzen the problem of passive safety is mainly solved in the field of numerical simulations, where the main tool for solving nonlinear physical processes associated with the short duration events and with large deformations is the LS-DYNA – the explicit FEM program. During VZU Plzen acting in VCKV the research in passive safety has been focused mainly on the following topics: The study of possibilities in using restraint systems in the train driver cab for the case of chosen collision scenarios – possibilities of using safety belts and airbags and their impact on the values of the biomechanical injury criteria. Deformation element design using mathematical optimization methods implemented in the LS-OPT program. An important activity was also support of the Skoda 109E high speed locomotive crashworthiness development.
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