Concept and construction design of a freight wagon bogie frame with variable axle distance

In the world, the importance of the human transportation and the cargo is arising. The railway systems are safe, economic and sustanaible right along with being the most energy efficient way of transportation. The vehicles in the railway systems are the locomotive, the cargo or human transportation wagon and the bogie which is the wheeled part. During the usage of railway systems which is efficient in long haul, some problems are encountered. While the track gauge can be same inside most of the countries but it may change between country to country. Railway vehicles have ability to move along the country but if the track gauge changes in the other country during the transportation, the bogies must be changed to adopt to the the different wheel distances. At the boundaries of the countries, this process requires to seperate each wagon and locomotive one by one from their bogies with cranes and to place them to the new bogies of the other railway. Within the study in this thesis, it is aimed to eliminate the time and energy loss with the design of a bogie which has variable gauge between its wheels, which is appropriate for the working and manufacturing conditions of our country and which is also conforming to the railway system standards. With the help of the proposed design, the change stations will be established at the junction points of the railways with variable gauge dimensions. Thus the railway tracks will move in a continuous manner, without any hesitance, the transition to the other railway will be completed. While the wheels and the bogies positioning is kept constant en route by the lock system of the the inner axle boxes in the bogie, the locks are opened in the change stations, and the positions of a guide rail and the wheels are changed there. During the switching process, the load is carried by the side structures of the bogie, the frames. When the replament of the wheels are completed the lock will be closed again to disable the movement of the wheel. The concept design of bogie is created with CATIA V5, in accordance with the railway systems standards and operating conditions. The design is based on the three-piece bogie concept.The finite element model of the bogie was created with Altair Hypermesh pre-process program, and solved with ABAQUS. Fatigue analysis solved with LIMIT-CAE.