Manufacturing
Martec, in partnership with Garex
Consultants International, was engaged to perform
a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of a fleet of covered
grain hopper railcars. The objective of the study
was to determine which cars in the fleet could be
economically upgraded to 286,000 lbs Gross Rail Load
(GRL). The upgraded cars must meet the requirements
of the Association of American Railroads (AAR) Standard.
FEA was employed to determine if the as-built car
structure is sufficient to handle the increased loading
and to identify specific areas requiring any design
improvements.
The focus car for this analysis was a 4550ft3 bottom
discharge closed top hopper car of all steel welded
construction. The car is of stub sill design, incorporating
end shear plates and a longitudinal loading trough
running along the top of the car. A Mechanical Desktop
geometric model was created by Garex to represent
the structure and used by Martec to develop a 42,000
node, 43,000 element, finite element model. Eleven
static load cases and buckling checks comprised the
analysis as laid out in the AAR standard. The analysis
was performed using Martec’s own Trident FEA
software.
Reference:
1. Grain Hopper Car FEA Results of First Car Study
Preliminary Report, February 2001, Martec Report:
TR-01-04
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