The German Holman Vehicle Engineering Company is working with partners to develop an integrated lightweight roof for rail vehicles.
The project focuses on the development of a competitive tram roof, which is made of load-optimized fiber composite materials. Compared with the traditional roof structure, the weight is greatly reduced (minus 40%) and the assembly is reduced Workload.
In addition, it is necessary to develop economical manufacturing and assembly processes that can be used for production. The project partners are RCS Railway Components and Systems, Huntscher and Fraunhofer Plastics Center.
“The height reduction of the roof is achieved through the continuous use of lightweight fabrics and structural design and load-optimized glass fiber reinforced plastic construction methods, and the integration of additional components and loads to introduce functional lightweighting.” The relevant person said.
Especially modern low-floor trams have very high requirements on the roof structure. This is because the roof is not only essential to strengthen the rigidity of the entire vehicle structure, but also must accommodate the high static and dynamic loads caused by various vehicle units, such as energy storage, current transformer, braking resistor, and pantograph , Air conditioning units and telecommunications equipment.
Lightweight roofs must accommodate high static and dynamic loads caused by different vehicle units
These high mechanical loads make the roof structure heavy and cause the center of gravity of the rail vehicle to rise, resulting in unfavorable driving behavior and high pressure on the entire vehicle. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid an increase in the center of gravity of the vehicle. In this way, it is very important to maintain structural stability and consistency of lightweight.
In order to showcase the results of the design and technical projects, RCS will produce the first prototypes of FRP lightweight roof structures at the beginning of next year, and then conduct tests under realistic conditions at the Fraunhofer Plastics Center. At the same time, a demonstration roof was produced with related partners and the prototype was integrated into modern low-floor vehicles.
Post time: Dec-17-2021
