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In May 2015, the FRA and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration jointly released a final rule for tank car standards and operations controls. On Sept. 28, the FRA put the new car design through its paces with a side impact test at the research center.
“Previous tests on the DOT 111 and 112 cars provided information for the design of the regulations,” says Francisco González III, tank car and hazardous materials project manager with FRA. “Today we’re going to get information on how the DOT 117 tank car performs and put that back into the model.”
FRA tasked representatives from the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center of Cambridge, Mass., with modeling and analysis.
In preparation for the test, TTC personnel had removed the car’s trucks and mounted it on a support nearly flush to the facility’s impact wall. One of TTC’s test locomotives, AAR 2000 (a GP40-3) was coupled to a flatcar modified into an impact car with a 12 by 12-inch ram.
At the appointed time, the impact car accelerated downgrade to the target 13.5 mph and rammed the impactor into the broad side of the tank car, which was fitted with a wide array of sensors.
The impactor hit the car, sounding like a cross between cars coupling hard and an auto crash. As expected, the roundness of the cylindrical car morphed into an oval as the impactor pushed into the car, which itself was pushed backward into the wall then rebounded pushing the impactor back toward its origin.
Despite being on a downgrade, the impact car did not roll back toward the tank car again because its air hose had been extended with a PVC pipe. A fraction of a second before the impactor hit the tank car, a large piece of metal installed between the rails broke the pipe, activating the impact car’s brakes.
Dust rose from beneath the car as it resumed a near-cylindrical shape, albeit with a large dent.
Prior to the test, the car was filled with water with a 5 percent outage. Immediately following the test, TTC personnel approached carefully to be certain the tank had not breached and retrieved their high-speed cameras. After they ascertained the site was safe, observers were permitted to return to the car for a closer look.
After sufficient time to look at the damage to the jacket, researchers and observers returned to a conference room for a debriefing while TTC personnel removed the car’s jacket and thermal protection for a better look at the tank itself.
“The crash-worthiness range for this test, according to analysis performed by Volpe, was between 13 and 14 mph,” says González. Therefore, FRA decided to run the test at 13.5 mph. “The actual speed was 13.6, according to preliminary analysis. … The impact deformed the car but did not puncture it, so it agreed pretty well with the model.”
Once the jacket was removed, we returned to the impact wall. The jacket, now removed, laid on the ground, clearly deformed. While the dent to the tank was clearly deep, its integrity was intact.
Post-test, the tank car rested several inches from the impact wall. It also had noticeable dents to the back, although not nearly as deep as the point of impact. There was also evidence that the car slid significantly on the skids upon which it rested.
The dust that arose from the car following impact came from a concrete slab beneath the car. It appears that as the car ovalized, or as the cylindrical shape was squished into an oval shape, the bottom outlet valve’s skid protection rammed into and scraped along the slab. Prior to the test, the skid protection had a few inches’ clearance; post-test, it rested in rubble.
Researchers plan to take small samples, or coupons, of the shell to send for metallurgical analysis. Final results will be available in several months, and researchers at that time will decide if they need to do additional tests on the DOT 117.
However, some results will be published on FRA’s website by year’s end.
UPDATE: Clarification in glossary terms. Oct. 18, 2016, 11:04 a.m. Central time.
Interesting article, although I await the final results, as they will be much more informative.
If you want to really hear the English language (or American language, whichever) brutalized, sit in a courtroom where ordinary people argue their cases, like traffic court or small claims court.
Ilearnedmorefromthecommentsthanthearticle.
For all the language police, did you read the Tank Car Glossary?
Especially the part on Thermal Protection. I hear it is good on the transfer of “hear”.
Yes a good demonstration.
I agree with Mr. Cook. Are railroad people reading this Newswire or Grammar Police???
I do agree with comments about proper word usage and misspellings in general, but it seems a lot of the comments on this article are better suited for a grammar blog; not Trains.
To Mr. Degges, “Communicate” (Merriam-Webster):
1. To give information about (something) to someone by speaking, writing, moving your hands, etc.
2. To get someone to understand your thoughts or feelings
So if you understood the article; communication took place. Conversely, a person can be correct in every form when writing correspondence, but if the other person did not understand what you were saying; communication did not take place.
I commend Trains for providing their readers approximately 10 railroad news articles a day / 5 days a week. I am sure it is quite time consuming researching, contacting authorities, and getting an informative article out. As Newswire is a fast paced operation, I am willing to accept a few errors to get all the timely information they provide their subscribers. Besides, who among us when hastily sending correspondence has not noticed that autocorrect changed a word we typed? It is easy when hastily proof reading your article to check it for substance; not proper spelling, word usage, etc.
I am sure there are several mistakes in my comment and if that provokes the Grammar Police then I too have failed to communicate…or was it a case that the reader was receiving the message on a different frequency than what the subject was transmitted?
The use of “hear” for “heat” is a typo, and easily explained due to the “r” and “t” keys being adjacent on the standard keyboard. To me, an occasional typo is much less serious than incorrect grammar (such as confusing the forms of the verbs “lie” and “lay”).
Mr. Cook, do you want to communicate, or do you approve of simply putting words together?
Stop the B/S about words! Who built this car, and why remove the truck? Hit the car from the end like happens in a accordion wreck.
It seems the distinction between (and ability to properly use) lie/lay/lying/lain and lay/laid/laying/laid has been lost by the vast majority of Americans. I find that even many of my colleagues in academia (I’m a professor of astronomy and physics at a liberal arts college) don’t use these words properly.
And yes, I agree with Mr. Degges, at least the tank car seemed to survive this low-speed impact rather well.
What lies did the car tell as it lied on the ground?
It does seem that the car is well-made.