Equipment Mounting and Vibration in Rail
How rail equipment vibration and shock requirements work — EN 61373 and the analysis evidence for equipment qualification.
What is it?
EN 61373 (IEC 61373) defines vibration and shock test requirements for equipment mounted on railway vehicles. It classifies equipment by mounting location (vehicle body, bogie, axle) with increasing severity from body to axle-mounted. The standard defines random vibration test levels and shock test levels for each category.
Key concepts
- Category 1: body-mounted equipment — lowest vibration severity
- Category 2: bogie-mounted equipment — medium severity
- Category 3: axle-mounted equipment — highest severity
- Random vibration: PSD levels defined for each category and axis
- Shock: functional shock and operational shock test levels
Why it matters to engineering analysis
The engineer analyses equipment mounting brackets and structures for the EN 61373 vibration and shock inputs. Random vibration FEA predicts stress and displacement. The analysis confirms that natural frequencies are outside the excitation bandwidth and that stresses remain below allowables.