What’s an ‘integral’ coach?

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What’s an ‘integral’ coach?

June 22, 2019, 12:12 PM

The ‘integral’ coaches built by ICF have monocoque or single-shell bodies (based on a 1950’s Swiss design, ‘Schlieren’ Swiss Car and Elevator Manufacturing Co.) with the floor being part of the body; it is an anti-telescopic design, which prevents coaches from being crushed lengthwise in the event of a train collision. Since they were brought into use, they have substantially reduced the number of passenger deaths in various cases of head-on collisions of trains. They are welded coaches fabricated from steel.

ये भी पढ़े – कई जानलेवा बीमारियों से बचाव का कारगर उपाय है ये मेवा, खाएंगे तो रहेंगे बिंदास

The single-shell design features a stressed skin. The shell acts as a hollow girder – the underframe, the walls, and the roof are joined with one another to form a single structural tube. The hollow girder offers resistance to bending and torsional stresses with efficient use of material, allowing reduction in the total weight of the coach compared to some earlier heavy designs that attempted to achieve strength and stability simply through increased weight of the frame structures. The hollow shell also features high resistance to compression stresses along the length of the passenger section. The compression resistance is further increased by providing pressed grooves or welded ribs on the walls, and by the use of corrugated sheets and carlines for the underframe and roof respectively. The end zones of the coach (normally the vestibules and/or lavatory or utility areas) are intentionally designed to offer lower resistance to compression. In the event of a collision, therefore, the areas at either end act as ‘crumple zones’ and preferentially buckle and absorb the kinetic energy of the collision while the passenger area of the coach remains safe from crumpling or telescoping.

Before these were introduced various other non-integral designs (with shell separate from underframe) were in use (and continued to be in use for decades later too). Steel underframes were first introduced in 1885; prior to that coaches were entirely wooden. Wooden shells for coaches continued well into the 20th century.

Source – IFRCA.org

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