Investigation and classification of bogie designs and their potential to adopt lightweight structures by means of a database

Abstract

The willingness to get lighter vehicles to reduce pollution to the atmosphere has never been so high. It is also present in the railway world, both in the body of the train and in the bogie. This thesis has been focused on bogies. There is a great variety of bogies, each one looks for specific properties depending on the application that is going to have. In general terms, it is difficult to differentiate the parts of each bogie, to understand why one uses a type of suspension rather than another type for example. To clarify this issue, a broad classification of bogies components designs is carried out, furthermore, a general analysis of each component design has been added to the classification, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages. To compact and sort all this information, a database has been created using the structure of the previously selected classification. The engine of the database is the program Microsoft Access in its 2016 version. Through queries, forms and reports will be possible to analyze the market situation. Moreover, get an overview of how the components are arranged and selected for the bogies. The created database is a tool that can be extended, improved and adapted to the requirements of a future user. Finally, in this thesis, the database has been filled with 74 bogies from important and worldwide manufacturers such as Alstom, Siemens, Bombardier, among others. Queries have been done to demonstrate how the database works, but also, to answer questions that have arisen during the creation of this thesis.