FINAL PHASE 14 REPORT ON STUB SILL BUCKLING STUDY

Over a period of years there has been a series of buckling incidents involving nonpressure type tank cars. These buckling incidents in practically all cases only involved the stub sill (non-continuous center sill) designs without exterior coils. With very few exceptions only older cars which were not designed to current AAR specifications were involved. This study was undertaken to determine if there should be any difference in design requirements between stub sill and continuous sill tank cars. Four stub sill design cars built in the mid 1960's and five current design cars were tested. An extensive number of 3 element strain rosettes were applied to both the inside and outside of the tanks. The current cars were tested to the existing requirements of 1000 Kips static compression load and 1,250 Kips impact load, and the older cars were tested to the load limits which they could sustain without permanent damage. This report describes the entire study and concludes that the current designs of stub sill tank cars comply with the requirements of the current AAR design manual. It is recommended that the design criteria for stub sill tank cars should remain the same as currently required for continuous sill tank cars and other freight cars.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • Prepared under the RPI-AAR Tank Car Safety Research and Test Project.
• Corporate Authors:

  Association of American Railroads Research Center

  3140 South Federal Street
  Chicago, IL  United States  60616
• Authors:
  • Graves, C T
  • Olson, L L
• Publication Date: 1977-7-29

Media Info

• Features: References;
• Pagination: 203 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Buckling; Compression tests; Couplers; Design; Force; Specifications; Structural analysis; Tank cars; Tests; Vehicle design
• Uncontrolled Terms: Design criteria; Longitudinal forces
• Old TRIS Terms: Center sills; Stub sills; Tank car design; Tank car safety research and test project
• Subject Areas: Design; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00165078
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: Association of American Railroads
• Report/Paper Numbers: RA-14-1-38 Res. Rpt., AAR-R-276
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 23 1977 12:00AM