PSI - Issue 53

Vítor M.G. Gomes et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 53 (2024) 285–290 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2023) 000–000

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vide, for being a competitive choice in the transportation industry, rail vehicles are required to be accessible to the population, fast enough without putting the passenger’s safety in danger. In the railway players and manufacturers, some concerns are related to the maintenance downtimes and own weight of the vehicle. In case of a lack of stock of vital components for operating, the vehicles can be disabled until the com ponent is repaired or replaced, which may cause some constraints since they need to be produced or requested by the manufacturer. Therefore, additive manufacturing, AM, has a large range of applicability since it permits manufacturing new spare parts at high speed and low cost, making AM an alternative more viable than conventional manufacturing processes. Moreover, AM can be applied for just-in-time production processes which might reduce significantly the need for large warehouses to keep thousands of individual spare parts for the case of failures of certain components still having a low failure probability (Makerverse (2022); Massivit (2022)). Taking into account these advantages, some players have invested in new technologies based on additive processes to improve the quality of their services. This short paper intends to introduce briefly the position of some railway players in relation to the application of AM for railway industry besides some application scientific studies of AM in railway rolling stock components.

2. Application Fields of the Additive Manufacturing in the Railway Rolling Stock

According to the literature and the current developed works, possible applications fields for AM in the railway rolling stock sector are in replacement, reparation, and development of new designs as schematized in Fig. 1 (Zhengkai et al. (2023)). 3. AM Applications

Railway Rolling Stock

Additive Manufacturing

New Designs Development of optimized geometries and materials with high strenght-weight ratio

Replacement of conventional or obsolete spare parts

Reparation of big size components (surface defects)

04 / 15 Fig. 1. Illustration of possible railway rolling stock manufacturing areas for additive manufacturing, (Zhengkai et al. (2023)).

2.1. Replacement of Spare Parts

Several players have been introducing the AM process in the production of spare parts for the replacement of conventional parts. Some of these replacements are made due to certain spare parts becoming obsolete. These changes have shown many advantages to players in the sector in terms of speed and production cost. In the case of SNCF, the major player in the French railway industry, AM has been integrated into the projects of spare parts. Its implementation allowed avoiding long downtimes and also increasing e ffi ciency in part stock management and reduce delivery times by 85 %. Also, Alstom implemented AM to produce new drain plugs of TPU 92A for tramways in the Algeriam Setif network. AM had a reduction in costs of 80 %. Additionally, AM was employed in the jigs and fixtures of electronic and electric parts, whose production took into account safety certifications for example EN 45545 standard (Zhengkai et al. (2023); Railway International (2022); KIMYA (2021); AMFG (2019)). Fig. 2 - A illustrates a pull-out box whose shell was produced by AM and additively-manufactured cable guides with safety