The Research Of VP Technologies For The Railway Tank Cars Design

Railway Vehicle Virtual Prototypingis VP technology's specific application in the design and manufacture of railway vehicle, as well as a integrated simulation system comprehensively supporting the development and design of high speed DMUs, over loading wagons and high speed locomotives. In this paper the author indicates the core technique of VP is performance simulation (CAE). Concerning its simulation management and supporting technique, this discourse carries out a series of study.In this paper, the finite element model of Railway Tank body is created, and the strength and stiffness of Railway Tank body under the multi-load is computed basing on Hypermesh/Optistruct and ansys Software; the thicknesss of plates for Railway Tank body are taken as design variables, the strength and stiffness of Railway Tank body are used as restrictions, the Railway Tank body weight is taken as the objective for minimum, a optimization design model is formulated, the feasible direction method is used to optimized the design variables, then the optimization designs considering multi-load strength and stiffness restrictions are achieved for reducing the Railway Tank body weight and improving the stress distribution.After optimization, the weld fatigue life and buckling stability of Railway Tank body are evaluated. The weld fatigue life is evaluated using structural stress method which is based on the mesh-insensitive, the stability analysis mainly considered buckling stability under compression load. The main research contents and conclusion are follows:1. The geometric model and finite element model of Railway Tank body are established, the static strength and stiffness are calculated;2. In order to determine whether there is enough design space for optimization, the buckling stability of the Railway Tank body was analysed and the main weld fatigue life was forecasted for Railway Tank body;3. The size optimization model and topology optimization model are formulated, then size and topology optimization designs are carried out for reducing the Railway Tank body weight;4. The buckling stability of the optimized Railway Tank body are evaluated, the optimized results are corrected basing on stability conditions, then static strength,stiffness and buckling stability are all met;5. The main weld fatigue life of the corrected Railway Tank body according to the buckling stability are evaluated.In this paper, the structure optimization design of Railway Tank body has been completed successfully basing on Hypermesh/Optistruct software and a mass reduction of a 18.37% for Railway Tank body is achieved, at the same time, static strength and stiffness, buckling stability and weld fatigue strength meet the requirements, the lightweight of Railway Tank body is achieved and a new method for lightweight design of railway Tank body is brought forward. Basing on this study, the integrated size, topology and shape and the multi-disciplinary optimization design including more load can be carried out to improve the design level of railway Tank body.