Full scale fatigue test performed to the bolster beam of a railway vehicle

摘要: Many structural elements are exposed to conditions of load that difficult consider during the design stage, such as environment uncertainties, random impacts, overloads and inherent material idealization amongst others, hence, miss-estimating its life-time cycle. One way test those designs is construct a representative full-scale specimen it under most critical in controlled laboratory. Herein, we present case study fatigue performed over bolster beam redesigned Universidad EAFIT belonging railway vehicle. The was composed by three stages, each one testing different hypothesis. instrumented at locations, following results FEM analysis previously computed. As results, welds were identified total damage computed for an equivalent operation eighteen-years, also behaviour presence extreme longitudinal loads.