Optimization of freight wagons designs

	P resented by State University of Infrastructure and Technology. 

The aim of a paper is to develop innovative theoretical positions, methodological foundations and practical means for improving the technical and economic indicators of freight wagons.

The author, on the basis of theoretical studies and experiments, obtained a complex of multifactor mathematical dependencies of the main indicators and parameters of the basic elements of the supporting systems of freight cars and their promising designs. The basic conceptual foundations of an idealistic-oriented concept of creating freight car structures have been formed. The scientific basis for the development of variation descriptions of designs of freight cars and their components has been created. Structural and functional models of freight car structures and the procedure for carrying out functional cost analysis (value engineering) of their systems are proposed. A method has been developed for creating constructive components of freight cars as beams of equal resistance to the total action of operational loads. In practice, the developed solutions have been successfully implemented in models of freight cars: 12-9745, 20-9749, 12-9904, 12-9904-01. The results of the work are implemented in: JSC “DMP”, JSC «Dneprovagonmash», PJSC “KRCBW”, SE “UkrRICE”, as well as in the educational process of the State University of Infrastructure and Technology. The economic effect from the introduction of scientific and technical results is 4528 thousands UAH in the manufacture of 100 units.

Innovative scientific and practical solutions created and presented in the paper have no analogues in the world. A paper topic fully meets the requirements of the research priority of the Shift2Rail initiative, which is a part of the European Union's Framework Programme for research and innovation Horizon 2020.

Number of publications:170, including 5 monographs, 3 manuals, 82 articles (9 - in editions indexed by the Scopus database). According to the Scopus database, the total number of references to the author’s publications presented in the paper is 44, the h-index (for a paper) = 6; according to the GoogleShcolar database, the total number of links is 517, the h-index (for a paper) = 16. The novelty and competitiveness of technical solutions are protected by 11 Ukrainian patents for inventions, 9 Ukrainian patents for useful models and 1 copyright for a work. On this subject, the author defended 1 doctoral and 1 candidate dissertations.