New York, NY

New York City Transit Rail Vehicle Qualification

Scope/Solutions

Deploying new rail vehicles for New York City Transit (NYCT) requires qualifying the carbody’s fitness for use and incorporating crash energy management (CEM). SGH, working with EXP, is providing engineering support to help Hyundai Rotem develop a carbody design to satisfy the NYCT’s specifications. The carbody design must consider manufacturability and balance the demands of crashworthiness, static, and fatigue performance requirements over their minimum forty-year service life.

SGH developed a conceptual design to incorporate crush elements in the end frame that will help control collapse of the carbody’s end. Highlights of our work include:

  • Developing finite element models to evaluate carbody static, fatigue, and natural frequency load cases and the required train-to-train crash analyses
  • Performing scoping analyses to determine appropriate crash energy distributions for a ten-car assembly, including preliminary stress analyses for the primary static load cases
  • Adapting the three-dimensional models to incorporate the CEM design
  • Supporting testing of a prototype structure, including crush testing conducted on individual full-scale CEM components and dynamic impact testing conducted on an endframe representing the CEM system and its support on the carbody
  • Developing required project documentation to help Hyundai Rotem qualify their design for use in New York City’s transit system
  • Advising and helping Hyundai Rotem interact with NYCT and their engineers to efficiently navigate the qualification program

Project Summary

completion-date

2025 (Anticipated)

Completion Date
Solutions
New Construction
Services
Structures | Advanced Analysis
Markets
Infrastructure & Transportation
Client(s)
EXP | Hyundai Rotem
Specialized Capabilities
Computational Mechanics

Key team members

Robert MacNeill
Robert MacNeill
Structural Mechanics & Materials Division Head