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U.S. Department of Transportation U.S. Department of Transportation Icon United States Department of Transportation United States Department of Transportation

Side Impact Test of a DOT-113 Surrogate Tank Car with Water

Document Series:
Technical Reports
Author:
  • Federal Railroad Administration
Report Number
DOT/FRA/ORD-21/35
Office
RDI-22
Subject:
Hazardous Materials
Keywords:
Impact test, prototype DOT-113 tank car, tank car performance, transportation safety, hazardous materials, surrogate

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) conducted a side impact test of a surrogate DOT-113 tank car at Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) to evaluate its performance under dynamic impact conditions and to provide data for the verification and refinement of a computational model. The tank car surrogate was filled with water to approximately 82.4 percent of its volume, then sealed and pressurized to approximately 50 psig. The tank car surrogate was impacted by a 297,200-pound ram car traveling at 17.3 mph fitted with a 12-inch by 12-inch indenter. The ram car impacted the tank car 2 feet off-center toward the A-End. The tank car was not punctured. The Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe) performed pre-test finite element (FE) modeling to estimate the overall response of the tank to the impact. The pre-test models gave results that were in reasonable agreement with the test results. After the test, the pre-test FE model was updated to represent the measured speed of the ram car, resulting in excellent agreement with the measured test data. The overall goal of the DOT-113 side impact test series is to analyze the side impact performance of a DOT-113 tank car carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) under typical service conditions.


Last updated: Friday, February 25, 2022