A THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF COWCATCHER

Abstract

Indian Railway is one of the largest transportation networks in the world. Today Indian Railways has over 62,000 route kilometer of track and employs about 1.6 million people. 13,000 trains carry daily over 11 million passengers and one million tonnes of freight from and to 7,000 stations. So it requires adequate safety and protection. In India, railway tracks are generally open from both sides, which results in frequent coming of stray animal on the track. So the striking of the animals to the trains is very common. Cowcatcher is used to protect the railway engine from hitting of the stray animals coming frequently on the tracks. As the cowcatcher is subjected to repeated impact loading in day to day journey, a crack has been found to initiate on underframe body. This crack may grow further and may result into a fatal accident. In order to investigate the crack found in the engine frame, it was felt that force transmitted to the engine frame by animal hitting through cowcatcher could be a possible reason. Thus it was proposed to investigate the cowcatcher so as to make it better design. To analyze this problem, an experimental one third scaled model of the existing design has been made and has been tested to measure the various parameters as stress and deflection. Another analytical (FEM) model using ANSYS software have been made. Further, the results of the experimental and the analytical models have been compared. And the salient points have been concluded.