Research and practice on a new flexible quasi-static test platform for railway vehicle anti-collision posts

Aming at the shortcomings of the existing crushing test platform for rail vehicles, a design strategy was proposed and a new flexible quasi-static test platform was developed. The elastic-plastic performance of the anti-collision posts of a typical subway vehicle was experimentally investigated based on the developed test platform. The obtained results show that the proposed design strategy is correct and feasible for guiding the design of the flexible quasi-static test platform. The developed new test platform equips with the functions of elastic-plastic tests for anti-collision posts and has good stability with maximum relative displacement of 1.52 mm and 2.22 mm in central collision/corner post elastic-plastic test. The central collision/corner post of the typical subway vehicle has good elastic-plastic performance and could meet the requirements of ASME RT-2-2014. This study provides practical references for the development of a quasi-static crushing test platform for rail vehicle-end structures.