Resource-saving steel hopper for loading of railway cars

Abstract

Abstract The article is devoted to the study of geometric characteristics of corrugated sheets of railway grain hopper. In particular, the problem of finding the optimal parameters of a corrugated sheet of a given length, such as the height and width of the corrugation shelves, is solved. The optimality condition in this problem is determined by the minimum mass of the corrugated sheet. Because of analytical calculations, it was found that, regardless of the angle of tip of the corrugation wall, there will always be such a value of optimum height at which the corrugation area will be the smallest. For the analysis of this parameter, a series of curves of dependence of the corrugation cross-section area on the height for different angles of tip were constructed. The study also provided concise and engineering-friendly equations to determine the optimum height and width of corrugation shelves for wall angles up to 60º. These expressions can be applied to the case of corrugated sheet with a limited number of erection joints. For other cases of jointing of the corrugated sheets with each other (complete or partial overlapping of the lower part), additional studies should be performed similar to the procedure presented.