Scientific Justification for the Structural Design of a Universal Railway Container Frame and Reinforcing Elements

Freight railway transport represents a key part of intermodal transport systems.It ensures the long-range transportation of goods by land, in transport units, for varying distances.Containers are the standard transport units used for intermodal transport.Requirements for reliable and safe transport leads to new design solutions.The presented research is focused on the innovative design of a container structure.Structural solutions of a universal container frame were proposed to increase the efficiency of container transportation.A feature of these solutions is the introduction of reinforcing elements into the structure, which reduces the force factors in the highest load areas of the structure.These elements are made in the form of a fork and provide unloading of the longitudinal beams of the frame, during operation.In order to substantiate the proposed solutions, appropriate calculations of the container frame, as a rod system, have been carried out.The most rational variant of the container frame was selected.The frame's profile was determined, and the strength calculation was carried out using FEM (Finite Element Method).Two load cases were analyzed: one load case for the longitudinal load, where the maximal stresses were up to the value of 165.4 MPa and the other for lifting the container, where the maximal stresses were up to 138.4 MPa.The results of the numerical calculations have proven the feasibility of the proposed solutions.