With the rapid development of high-speed EMU, lightweight has become a main technical direction in rail transit. Host enterprises at home and abroad continuously introduce various lightweight vehicles. The lightweight brake caliper unit mainly includes material lightweight and structure lightweight. The development of a large number of lightweight materials, such as aluminum alloy and titanium alloy, has made it possible to reduce their weight greatly.
Titanium alloys have inherent advantages in lightweight product development due to their high strength, low density, high corrosion resistance, impact, and fatigue resistance, which can greatly improve the overall structural strength and vibration resistance of the brake caliper while reducing its quality. The original weight of this type of clamp unit is 69.3 kg. The main loaded components such as suspension, brake support, hanger, cylinder head, piston tube, cylinder head guide tube, yoke, and lever, etc. of the clamp unit were originally manufactured by QT500-7 and QT600-7 with a mass of 43.4 kg, accounting for 62.6% of the total mass. Therefore, they were trial-manufactured with titanium alloy (TC4) and a total weight loss of 17.6 kg.
The titanium alloy brake caliper unit has a high safety margin and redundancy in structure. Further research is required on the limited design method of brake caliper unit structure to make full use of the material properties of titanium alloy so that it can be used safely and lightly.
