Transport of DE-LIGHT: The Design and Prototyping of a Lightweight Crashworthy Rail Vehicle Driver's Cab

Abstract

This paper describes the design, validation and prototyping of a lightweight crashworthy rail vehicle driver's cab using advanced composite sandwich materials. By exploiting the lightweighting, energy absorption and design integration benefits of composites, an innovative modular cab structure was developed that provides significant savings in mass, cost and part count compared to conventional cab designs.