The 2024 VERENA Award went to the project “Bionic Train Carriage Body” of the team Siemens Mobility Austria – TU Wien.
In this project methods of numerical topology optimization were used for reducing the body shell weight of a subway carriage body by 20%. Results obtained in the master’s thesis of Andreas Ruthmeier, “Structural Optimization of Reinforced Shell Structures” (advisor: Helmut Böhm), served as a starting point for the design developed by Siemens Mobility to series maturity. Reducing the mass of the subway carriage leads to a reduction of energy consumption and of CO2 emissions in operation.
This successful cooperation between a leading Austrian industrial company and the ILSB emphasizes the practical relevance of two core research fields of the ILSB, light weight design and numerical engineering methods.
