Safety against derailment of a container freight wagon with flexible components according to the EN 14363 standard – the Method 1

Safety against derailment is one of the main safety indicators of a rail vehicle. According to the EN 14363 standard, there are three methods to evaluate the safety against derailment of a rail vehicle, which can be performed on real track or by means of simulation modelling. In this paper, a simulation test of safety against derailment is carried out using the commercial software Simpack according to the Method 1 of the EN 14363 standard. Three configurations of the rail vehicle model have been created for simulation modelling. Each model includes a different level of a detail of the mechanical structure. The first configuration is a basic model with rigid bodies, which serves as a check model to evaluate the influence of flexible elements. The second configuration is a hybrid system with a flexible wagon frame and with a rigid bogie frame allowing the flexibility of the frame to be considered. The third configuration includes flexible elements for both the wagon frame and the bogie frame simulating more complex mechanical interactions. Safety against derailment is evuated and presented in a graphical form of the derailment safety ratio. There is evaluated, that the flexibility of the wagon components significantly influences the dynamical response of the wagon movement on a track.