Experimental study of a honeycomb energy-absorbing device for high-speed trains

Abstract

Aluminium honeycomb is a light weight, thin-walled material with a typical multi-cellular construction and a good strength-to-weight ratio. Therefore, aluminium honeycomb can be used as an energy-absorbing device for high-speed trains. Due to its large mass and high operating speed, a high-speed train can generate large impact energy. Thus, an energy-absorbing device with a greater energy absorption capability must be designed for high-speed trains. To reduce the aerodynamic drag, the cross-sectional area of a high-speed train is limited. Therefore, a honeycomb energy-absorbing device should be designed in such a way that it is longer than the traditional energy-absorbing devices; however, this may lead to bending, destruction and uncontrollable deformation of the honeycomb; these factors are not conducive for energy absorption. In this paper, a sleeve structure was designed for high-speed trains, and a crash experiment of the energy-absorbing structure showed that the bending and destruction of the honeycomb energy-absorbing device are effectively suppressed compared with the ordinary honeycomb energy-absorbing structure. Moreover, the fluctuation of the crash force was smaller and the crash force is more stable than the traditional thin-walled energy-absorbing structure. Therefore, the deformation instability problem of the ordinary honeycomb energy-absorbing structure and the crash force fluctuation problem of the traditional thin-walled energy-absorbing structure can be solved. Then, a crash experiment and simulation involving a high-speed train with improved honeycomb energy-absorbing device was carried out, and the results showed that the deformation of the end of the train body was stable and controllable, and the train body deceleration satisfied the collision standard EN15227.