Geometric Analyses of Carbodies as the Basis for a Significant Weight Reduction in the Roll2Rail Project

Abstract

Within the Roll2Rail project of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, one topic is the carbody on which vehicle manufacturers, operators and academia as well as research institutes work together. The content of this project includes the groundwork for the Shift2Rail project, and further investigations built on this research are continued there. One topic in the Roll2Rail project was the technical specification that defines the basis for a major lightweight design. In this context the carbody geometry was examined, as it has a significant influence on the achievable lightweight potential. Thus a method was developed which allows the estimation and comparison of the lightweight potentials of different carbody geometries. The method was used for two different base carbodies (carbody of a high speed train and carbody of a metro). For these carbodies, the positions and dimensions of doors, windows and underfloor pan were varied. The analyses show that a high lightweight potential can be achieved by positioning the service door together with the underfloor pan in the middle of the carbody for the high speed train. For the metro the reduction of the door width by increasing the width of the window pillars offers a high lightweight potential. The results of the analyses show the influence of cut outs on the achievable lightweight potential and are incorporated in the technical specification of the subsequent Shift2Rail project.