The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center of Cambridge, Mass., recently conducted a full-scale crash test of passenger rail cars at the Department of Transportation’s rail testing facility in Pueblo, Colo. The testing, which took place in March, was part of the Center’s major research into new technologies that could vastly improve the rail cars’ crashworthiness. This effort was designed to determine the viability of innovative, energy-absorbing designs for commuter rail cars, as well as passenger seats and tables, to better protect rail passengers and crew members.

During the testing a five-car, cab-forward passenger train equipped with a crash-energy management (CEM) system was crashed head-on into an equally weighted standing locomotive with two freight cars, at a speed of 32 miles per hour. The CEM design uses zones of controlled crush; collision energy is absorbed by a series of components and distributed to unoccupied areas throughout the length of a train, rather than crushing large volumes of the first car, as is characteristic of current equipment. The CEM-equipped train survived the test relatively unscathed, and both trains remained upright and on the tracks, in contrast to earlier tests on typical rail equipment. The seats and tables appeared to have performed equally well.

This crash test was the first to incorporate a CEM system and other passenger safety technologies, including:

• Crush zones that protect the passenger and operator space and distribute the force of impact to unoccupied areas of the train.
• Pushback couplers and anti-climbers that absorb the force of impact, hold the train cars together, and keep trains upright and in line.
• Strengthened end frames, advanced bumpers, and other structural improvements that absorb energy and lessen the impact on passengers.
• Improved seats that are strategically padded and designed to contain and cushion passengers during a crash.
• Newly designed worktables with crushable edges that reduce the risk of abdominal injury.

A team from Volpe Center will closely analyze the test data, which were gathered with hundreds of sensors, dozens of cameras, and ten instrumented dummies. However, preliminary results hold promise for the next generation of rail cars and their occupants. Metrolink, the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, will be the first agency in the country to incorporate some of these improvements. An accident in January 2005 involving a Metrolink train and an SUV killed 11 people and injured nearly 200 others.

Since 1989, the Volpe Center has been performing in-depth studies to determine effective strategies for improved structural crashworthiness and occupant protection. The first series of full-scale tests defined the crashworthiness of conventional design equipment in three impact conditions. Corresponding tests of modified passenger rail cars allowed the performance of both types of equipment to be compared. The Center's ongoing research, which integrates computer modeling and full-scale test crashes, supports the development of federal regulations and standards for new rail car designs.

The Volpe Center's role includes defining appropriate scenarios to study collisions, developing computer models to simulate the structural and dynamic results of the collisions, designing and supervising the full-scale tests, processing the test data, and comparing the test measurements with the analysis results. The computer models are then used to evaluate a wider range of collision conditions than can be tested.