New Material: Made Of The First Batch Of Carbon Fiber Composite Materials For Heavy Haul Railway Wagons In China

The picture shows a lightweight heavy haul railway freight car made of carbon fiber composite material

It was learned from the National Energy Group that the first batch of lightweight and heavy-duty carbon fiber composite railway wagons jointly developed by the Group's railway equipment company and other units were officially launched on September 10. This marks a major breakthrough in the research, development and application of heavy haul railway mobile equipment in China, and has important demonstration significance for promoting the green and low-carbon transformation of heavy haul railway transportation in China.

In the field of rail transit technology, vehicle lightweight, that is, to reduce the weight of the vehicle body as much as possible and reduce the running energy consumption on the premise of ensuring the vehicle performance, is the key technology to achieve green and low-carbon rail vehicles. The traditional heavy haul railway freight cars mainly use steel, aluminum alloy and other metal materials. Due to the material characteristics, the vehicles are faced with the bottleneck of weight reduction. Carbon fiber is an excellent material to realize the lightweight of heavy haul railway freight cars due to its advantages of light weight, high strength, fatigue resistance, corrosion resistance, etc.

This time, the National Energy Group Railway Equipment Company, together with the National Energy Group Beijing Low Carbon Clean Energy Research Institute and CRRC Qiche Co., Ltd., successfully developed advanced carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composites suitable for the field of heavy haul railway freight cars, and overcame key technical problems such as the integrated preparation of large parts of composite plates, This kind of new material is applied to the main bearing structure of heavy haul railway freight car body for the first time.

"The specific strength and specific modulus of the carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composite developed by us are 3-5 times and 1.5-1.8 times of those of aluminum alloy materials, respectively, which can better meet the requirements for lightweight and production and use of large parts of heavy haul railway wagons, and has technical advantages such as lighter, more energy-saving, higher strength, and stronger environmental adaptability." Wu Fumei, manager of the Composite Materials Department of the Advanced Materials Research and Development Center of Beijing Low Carbon Clean Energy Research Institute of the National Energy Group, introduced that the dead weight of the new vehicle body is more than 20% lower than that of similar aluminum alloy body.

At the same time, this type of heavy haul railway freight car also integrates new components such as high-strength heavy haul coupler, integrated air braking device, self dumping bottom door opening and closing device, and realizes the integrated application of modern information technologies such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, etc. on railway freight cars.