Reliability management methods for welded joints of railway vehicle bogie frames

Abstract

The load on bogie frames for railway vehicles in service varies greatly, which requires careful consideration of both variability and uncertainty in load and material strength when assessing the fatigue life of welded joints. In this study, a new method was developed based on reliability engineering to clearly differentiate between reliability and confidence level. The results showed that a simple formula could be used to determine the probability of failure and safety factor when load variation was relatively small. For easy reference, we provided the tables of partial safety factors for the target reliability. In situations with large load variation, we found that Monte Carlo simulations were effective for calculating the probability of failure. Lastly, we compared our calculated probabilities of failure with the literature and discussed these results.

Keywords

• fatigue life
• probability of failure
• welded joint
• railway bogie frame
• reliability engineering
• confidence level