COMPRESSION LOADS FOR LIGHT RAIL VEHICLES IN THE UNITED STATES
The requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act for light rail vehicles (LRVs), resulting in the emergence of lower floors and cutouts in the underframe for wheelchair lifts, will create new challenges for structural engineers. These challenges will make it necessary to reexamine the specified LRV design compression loads and to compare them with design compression loads on other types of vehicles. When a comparison takes into consideration the size of the trains and their operating speeds, a case can be made for lowering the compression load of 2 g at AWO (empty) vehicle weight currently prevailing in U.S. specifications. A crash index is introduced that indicates how much compression resistance is assigned to absorb and disperse a unit of a train's energy. It is concluded that the LRV crash index is approximately four times higher than that for mainline or rapid transit cars. Accordingly, LRV compression loads should be lowered to provide greater safety, lower weight, lower energy consumption, and more attractive general arrangements.
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Availability:
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Supplemental Notes:
- Distribution, posting, or copying of this PDF is strictly prohibited without written permission of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials in this PDF are copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Lewalski, J
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Conference:
- Seventh National Conference on Light Rail Transit: Building on Success--Learning from Experience
- Location: Baltimore, Maryland
- Date: 1995-11-12 to 1995-11-15
- Publication Date: 1995
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: p. 194-198
- Monograph Title: SEVENTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LIGHT RAIL TRANSIT, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, NOVEMBER 12-15, 1995. VOLUME 1
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Serial:
- Transportation Research Board Conference Proceedings
- Volume: 1
- Issue Number: 8
- Publisher: Transportation Research Board
- ISSN: 1073-1652
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Alternatives analysis; Commuter cars; Compression; Conferences; Energy consumption; Light rail vehicles; Low floor vehicles; Rapid transit cars; Vehicle design; Vehicle safety; Vehicle weight; Wheelchair lifts
- Identifier Terms: Americans with Disabilities Act
- Old TRIS Terms: Crash index; Vehicular safety
- Subject Areas: Design; Energy; Highways; Public Transportation; Vehicles and Equipment;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 00716778
- Record Type: Publication
- ISBN: 0309061520
- Files: TRIS, TRB
- Created Date: Jan 30 1996 12:00AM