On September 10, the lightweight heavy-duty railway freight car made of carbon fiber composite material, jointly developed by CRRC Qiqihar, China Energy Railway Equipment Company, and National Institute of Clean-and-Low-Carbon Energy officially rolled off the production line. This marks a major breakthrough in China’s manufacturing, development, and application of new materials for heavy-duty railway mobile equipment, significantly demonstrating the promotion of China’s green and low-carbon transformation of heavy-duty railway transportation equipment.

The project team focused on the core issues of lightweight and intelligent systems of railway equipment, successfully developed advanced carbon fiber reinforced composites suitable for application in heavy-duty railway freight cars and used this new material in the main load-bearing structure of a heavy-duty railway freight car body. The material’s specific strength and specific modulus are 3 to 5 times and 1.5 to 1.8 times that of aluminum alloy material, respectively. The self-weight of the railway freight car body using this material is lower than that of aluminum alloy material by over 20%, and the ratio of weight to loading capacity is as low as 0.22, which is the best among railway freight cars of the same axle load in China.

The team independently developed a vehicle-mounted intelligent monitoring system for heavy-duty railway freight equipment, integrating modern information technologies such as the Internet of Things, big data, and cloud computing into railway freight cars.