Research on the lightweight design of GFRP fabric pultrusion panels for railway vehicle

This paper presents a study on the structural feasibility of pultrusion glass fiber reinforced polymers (GFRP) lightweight design of medium-speed railway vehicle mobile panels and their complete assembly for the substitution of the current steel panels. A detailed numerical analysis was carried out to analyze the effect of the most critical load cases from the specified ones, combining air-pressure and inertial loads. Using this methodology, a laminate optimization design was conducted using a special non-crimp fabric for meeting the mechanical requirements under these loads. The main components of the proposed design were manufactured by the innovative composite process of fabric pultrusion using multi-axial non-crimp fabrics (NCF). Finally, a GFRP panel prototype was submitted to static tests and its most critical fixation to static and fatigue tests, in both cases replicating the loads it would bear in the real application. From the finite element analysis (FEA) and the physical tests, it has been concluded that the proposed composite structure design not only complies with the mechanical requirements for its implementation, but also implies a weight reduction of 35.5% with respect to the original steel panel design.