TO THE ISSUE OF MODERNIZATION OF PASSENGER CAR BODIES

Passenger cars owned by JSC "Ukrzaliznytsia" have practically exhausted their resource. Improving the efficiency of railways requires the use of new innovative technical solutions. The article analyzes the technical condition of the bodies of passenger cars that have worked out their resource. A total of 540 wagons of different years of construction were inspected. In the course of the analysis, the results of inspections of the metal structures of cars were divided into five conditional groups depending on the service life. At the same time, the nominal values of the thicknesses of the structural elements of the car and the actual values were compared. The authors determined the intensity of the increase in wear of various elements of the body. It has been established that the lower trim, the roof slope and the lower part of the side wall have the greatest wear. It is proposed to use aluminum alloys for the modernization of passenger car bodies. The advantage of such a technical solution is an increase in the corrosion resistance of the body. This significantly increases the durability of the wagons and reduces the tare weight of the car. The reduction of tare allows to reduce the specific resistance to train movement, reduce fuel and electricity costs for train traction, and the operating costs of railway transport for energy consumption. To reduce operating costs using the basic provisions of the locomotive traction theory, calculations were made to determine the energy consumption for the movement of a passenger train according to the profile conditions of the real section of the regional branch of the Southern Railway by diesel and electric locomotive traction with the base variant and the variant of passenger cars with reduced tare weight) in composition of the train. In the calculations, it was considered that for the movement of passenger trains, a diesel locomotive of the TEP70 series is used for diesel traction, and for an AC electric locomotive of the ChS4 series. It has been established that the annual savings in energy costs for the traction of passenger trains when using passenger cars with a reduced tare weight is about 1 million UAH. Keywords: passenger car, body, resource, wear, modernization, economic effect.