Within CITEAN’s commitment to focus its activities on the customer, the
Centre has broadened its capacity to perform tests geared toward the
transportation sector, in this case, railroads.
In tests carried out for the railway sector, the size of the parts
and the magnitudes of the forces to which those parts are subjected
should be highlighted.
Performance of these tests was prompted by customer specifications
and from existing standards for railway applications, specifically
pertaining to elastomer based rubber suspension components and
mechanical parts. instigate
The new type of test shown here is conducted on bogy suspensions (parts of the wagon with two pairs of wheels, figures 1 and 2),
which are bi-material parts composed of rubber with interlaced metal
sheets. The test case involves performance of the following tests:
Static rigidity (dynamics): Ratio between
the constant static force (or variable dynamics) and the displacement
resulting from its application on a component. This magnitude is
measured in the three spatial axes, as shown in figure 2.
Static flow (dynamics): Increase in the
displacement that occurs when a component is subjected to a constant
static force (or variable dynamics), for a given time period.
Conducting the tests supposes the application of loads measuring
100KN to 220KN. The measured displacements are, nevertheless, in the
order of hundredths of millimeters.
The usage conditions of these parts are:
- Use in diesel-electric locomotives which make short and long-haul trips, pulling multiple units weighing up to 2000 metric tons
- Terminal vehicle velocity of 100 km/h
- Use on outdoor lines which operate in highly-polluted conditions, salty atmospheres and possibly acid rain.
- Service temperatures range from -25ºC to +50ºC.
The application of this loading level requires the use of adequately sized tools.
