For the speed-up of large vehicles such as a train, it is important to reduce the weight of a car-body that contributes most of the weight of vehicles. In order to decrease the weight of the car-body without sacrificing the safety of vehicles, it is effective to change materials of the car-body. Fiber reinforced composite materials have been widely used in aircraft and spacecraft structures because of their high specific strength, modulus, and high damping capacity. If they are applied to the car-body, it is expected that not only the speed of the car-body is increased but also noise and vibration of the car-body are reduced.
If an upper car-body is made of composite materials and the side plates of the car-body are made of steel, it is expected that both the speed and stability of the car-body are improved because it makes the gravity center of the vehicles lower. In this case, the joining of an upper composite car-body and the steel side plates is needed. Since the efficiency of composite structures is largely dependent not on structures themselves but on the joint used in structures, the optimum joining of the composite car-body is indispensable.
The force subjected to trains consists of internal pressure, bending and twisting moments. To increase the speed of the train, a railroad track is designed straight with little curve and slope. Therefore, the dominant force of the high speed train is the internal pressure because the difference between the inner and outer pressures of the car-body increases as the car speed increases specially traveling in a tunnel.
In this work, the 1/10 size composite-steel shell structure of the prototype train section subjected to internal pressure was developed and tested. The adhesive joining method was used to assemble the upper composite roof to the side steel plates. The stress distribution of the joint was analyzed using a commercial finite element software.
