Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

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Engineering Failure Analysis

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

Design and failure modes of a standard railway catenary cantilever

T
support
D. Rechenaa, V. Infanteb, , L. Sousab, R. Baptistab,c
⁎

a
MITPortugal, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade de Lisboa / IDMEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, ACPMME-Mechanical Engineering Department,
Av. Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
b
IDMEC, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal
c
CDP2T and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Setúbal School of Technology, Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, 2910-761 Setúbal, Portugal

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Infrastructure managers of small railways have limited action lines with respect to product de-
Railway velopment of maintenance components. In many cases, they have a significant number of dif-
Design for standardization ferent components in their operation railway lines. Therefore, they have a poor bargaining power
Fracture mechanics when it comes to ordering components for the railway infrastructure due to small ordering vo-
lumes. In addition, a large number of components has to be produced and stored to answer the
needs of the operation and maintenance, increasing the overall costs. An approach to reduce the
mentioned problems is standardization, which comes as a solution to reduce lifecycle costs due to
benefits such as increased production volumes, longer learning curves in manufacturing, main-
tenance and reduced stock levels. In this paper a set of standard cantilever supports for the
railway catenary system were developed thus replacing a set of supports with different designs
for similar functions. These components are of critical importance since they are responsible for
transmitting the entirety of the pre-loads, as well as train dynamic loads, of the catenary system
to the supporting poles. The new proposed solution was modelled and analysed using NX Nastran
and ABAQUS simulation tools with contact detection between components. The finite element
analyses covered the static behaviour as well as the linear fracture mechanics of cracks in critical
areas of the designed cantilever supports. The linear fracture results were also used to estimate
the fatigue life of the cantilever supports. The loads were modelled for train speeds of up to
300 km/h. The results indicate that the most likely failure mode is fatigue crack propagation in
one of the critical areas of the lower cantilever support under tension with a fatigue life of 8224
load cycles. Due to the low fatigue life of the nodular cast iron GJS-400-15, the B319-T7 and
A356-T6 aluminium alloys were also considered, resulting in fatigue lives of 375,990 and
1,093,500 cycles, respectively.

1. Introduction

Railway infrastructure managers have low amount component requirements for the maintenance of the existing infrastructure.
This occurs since components are built to guarantee the availability of the railway system. Since the requirements for new com-
ponents are low, the fixed manufacturing costs for each batch are still a large part of the unitary cost of new parts.
This problem is aggravated if the railway infrastructure span is low resulting in even lower component production batch

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: virginia.infante@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (V. Infante).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2019.104217
Received 19 June 2019; Received in revised form 23 July 2019; Accepted 29 September 2019
Available online 10 October 2019
1350-6307/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 1. Length of electrified railway tracks per country [1].

requirements. Fig. 1 presents the length of electrified railways in the countries of the European Union and the United kingdom [1].
The plot was obtained using the data from 2015 except for the countries of Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands
and Portugal. For these cases we used the most recent available data, namely: 2014 data was used for Bulgaria, Germany, Netherlands
and Portugal; data from 2013 was used for Italy; 2009 data was used for Belgium; 2008 data was used in Denmark’s case. From Fig. 1,
it is evident that for countries, such as Portugal, component production requirements are so low that the unitary costs of components
are too high. One way of increasing production batches is through the standardization of existing designs, which is why we selected
the present case study.
Standardization is a way of increasing component production volumes without whilst maintaining the number of required
components [2]. For example, if the railway infrastructure manager intends to assemble one hundred catenary cantilevers, a total of
four hundred components have to be manufactured through casting processes (one hundred of each). If the four components are all
replaced by a single one that performs all the functions, only one series of four hundred components has to be manufactured. With
increases in production batch sizes, fixed costs are diluted through more components thus reducing costs for each manufactured
component.
In this case study we redesigned a set of cantilever supports in the Portuguese catenary system. The catenary is a railway system
responsible for the distribution and delivery of electric energy to trains being fundamental in the availability of European railway
transport services. This availability is only secured if both static and fracture resistance criteria are met.
During the redesign process, we maintained the sub-assembly interfaces while generating concepts for the internal interfaces. This
allowed for the compatibility between the new designs and the existing infrastructure while exploring different design concepts. The
expected failure modes of the cantilever supports are statics, brittle fracture and fatigue. As such, we used the finite element method
to analyse the components regarding the referred failure modes. Due to the fatigue properties of nodular cast iron [3,4], the pos-
sibility of replacing this material with a different, cheaper material, but with better mechanical properties is also explored.
The original designs are comprised of bases and articulations, which are displayed in Fig. 2. For the lower support there are two
variants of narrow and wide bases. Our objective is to reduce the five original components to the lowest amount possible.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Materials

During the concept design and development phases, the considered base material was the GJS-400-15 nodular cast iron. Table 1
shows the material properties for this material according to [5], which include a crack propagation threshold of 7.5 MPa m1/2.
Although used for casting, this nodular iron shows a low fatigue crack propagation performance. Therefore, the possibility of using
other materials in this application was explored. Table 1 also indicates the properties of B319 and A356 aluminium alloys. Mostly
used for casting of automobile parts, these alloys show an improved fatigue performance, when compared with nodular cast irons [6].

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 2. Original support designs lower (left) and upper (right).

Table 1
Base materials used for concept design.
Material σy Yield stress (MPa) C m/cycle (MPa m1/2)−m m Kc fracture toughness (MPa m1/2)

GJS-400-15 [5] 250 2.2e−10 4.5 40.0

B319-T7 [6,7] 219 3.4e−12 4.4 12.9
A356-T6 [6,8] 151 2.7e−12 4.0 17.8

2.2. Specifications and concept development

Before developing new concepts, a set of specifications were pertaining to the service life of the new components as well as
adaptability to speed limit changes in the tracks and manufacturing limitations. These requirements are:

• Provide support for the catenary cantilever;

• Allow for train speeds up to 300 km/h;
• Allow for different configurations of the cantilever;
• Allow for contact wire and messenger wire expansion/contraction.
• Use the lowest number of different components possible without compromising current cost;
• The service life of the component is 50 years;
• The supports are easy to assemble/maintain;
• The supports can be assembled in the current infrastructure with minimal changes to said infrastructure;
• The material is Nodular Grey Iron;
• The design safety factor is 2.03.

Fig. 3. Detailed design of the cantilever support.

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 4. Catenary cantilever schematic, .

adapted from [10]

After numerical simulations (which are addressed in Section 2.3), we developed the detail design of the selected cantilever
support concept, depicted in Fig. 3.

2.3. Structural analysis

Due to the diversity of catenary systems across the European Union, the contact between train pantographs and contact wires is
going to have different performances, thus affecting energy collection quality as well as the durability of the contact components. To
allow for interoperability between countries, the EN50367 [9] standard enforces a set of rules for the allowable contact forces
between the pantograph and the contact wire:

• Mean contact force (F ): F m = 970 × 10 6v 2 + 70N

• Standard deviation (σ ):
m
max max < 0.3Fm

• Maximum contact force (F max): Fmax = 350N

Taking the standard into account, if a train travels at 300 km/h, then the mean contact force is of, approximately 157 N with its
maximum not exceeding 350 N.
As shown in Fig. 4, the contact wire is connected to the steady arm and the messenger wire through several droppers. The
messenger wire’s function is to reduce the contact wire’s sag, which is the vertical displacement of the contact wire due to its weight.
In order to achieve this more efficiently, both the messenger wire and contact wire are tensioned. This tension also allows for a
smoother contact between the train’s pantograph and the contact wire [10].
When the pantograph interacts with the contact wire a wave is propagated through the contact wire at a critical speed, at which
resonance occurs. This critical speed can be calculated using Eq. (1), in which EI is the wire’s bending stiffness, m̄ is the weight per
unit length, N is the tension load on the ends of the wire and L is the lengths between cantilever poles [11].
2EI N
ccrit = +
¯ 2
mL m
¯ (1)
Despite the fact that there are cases in the literature in which the bending term is neglected [10,12], in this paper, due to the data
availability we computed the complete required tension loads. To reduce the oscillatory behaviour of the catenary, therefore im-
proving the contact quality between the train’s pantograph and the contact wire, train circulating speeds should be set below 70% of
the catenary’s critical speed [10].
vmax = 0.7ccrit (2)
According to standard EN50367, the maximum contact force between the pantograph and the contact wire should not exceed
350 N. Since this load counteracts the wires weight, we considered that the most critical situation occurs due to the pre-tension loads
with wire weight and without pantograph contact force.

Table 2
Properties of the messenger wire and contact wire.
Messenger wire Contact wire

Material Bronze Electrolytic Copper

Wire diameter [mm] 10.5 12.4
Wire specific weight, m̄ [kg/m] 0.615 0.950
Wire elasticity modulus, E [GPa] 120 117
Second area moment, I [m4] 5.97E−10 1.16E−09
Suspended wire length, L [m] 27 27
Tension load, N [N] 8716 13,464
Wire weight [N] 163 252

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 5. (a) Wire load projections in curves, (b) resulting loads on cantilever and (c) supports loads on catenary cantilever in compression (left) and
tension (right).

Using the dimensional and material information of the messenger and contact wire as well as of the relative positioning between
cantilevers, we elaborated Table 2 where we computed the suspended cable mass as well as the wire tensions. These tensions are of
8716 N for the messenger wire and 13,464 N for the contact wire.
As the contact and messenger wire are tensioned at both extremities, the tension load balances itself if the catenary cantilever is
located in a straight path. If the cantilever is, instead, located in a curve, the wires are bent thus projecting the tension in a radial
direction and loading the cantilever (see Fig. 5(a)). The load projection will be maximum if the length between poles is maximum
(27 m) and the curve’s radius is minimum (205 m). The contact wire’s stagger will also play a role in this projection but we found its
effect to be negligible.
The wire tensions are, then, going to have different effects on the cantilevers depending on its placement in the curve. If the
cantilever is located on the inner side of the curve, the cantilever is going to be loaded in compression, otherwise it will be loaded in
tension. The resulting loads acting on the cantilever are displayed in Fig. 5(c). Using the resulting loads on the cantilever, its reactions
were computed using static equilibrium equations which were then applied on the supports for the finite element analysis (Fig. 5(b)).
For the purposes of numerical simulation, the components’ working conditions were considered as linear elastic with non-linear
contact. The support material was considered as linear elastic, and as mentioned the base material for the current design is the GJS-
400-15 nodular cast iron [5]. Connecting components were modelled using steel properties (E = 200 GPa and Poisson’s ratio of 0.25).
The friction coefficient between surfaces was of 0.5 for all parts [13,14]. After convergence analysis, the finite element simulations

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Table 3
Applied loads on the cantilever supports.
Compression Tension

R1[N] 406 4408

R2x [N] −3406 −1408
R2y [N] −1077 −1041

were comprised of 407,344 nodes (1,222,032 degrees of freedom) in linear tetrahedral elements (CTETRA4). The applied loads, as
described in Fig. 5(b), were computed for both cases of cantilever compression and tension and are listed in Table 3.
Since the component under design is comprised of nodular cast iron we performed fracture and fatigue analysis using the Abaqus®
software. Our analysis consisted of computing the J-Integral [7,15–17] to determine the stress intensity factors for both crack opening
Mode I (KI) and Mode II (KII), for through cracks in the critical areas of the component. Like in the work of Marques et al. we explicitly
simulated cracks in our finite element model [6]. Afterwards, we compared the obtained stress intensity factor results with the
material’s fatigue crack propagation threshold and fracture toughness, KIC, of 40 MPa m [5]. The finite element mesh was com-
prised of 558,226 quadratic hexahedral elements (C3D8R) and 960 quadratic tetrahedral elements (C3D10) making a total of
835,830 nodes and 2,507,490 degrees of freedom, after convergence analysis. The external loads cause bending and uniaxial tension
on the designed components. For different cantilever locations, different critical areas were identified. For the lower cantilever
support the critical area will be under the fork implantation in the main body, as indicated in Fig. 6(a). While for the upper cantilever
support, the critical areas are the connecting fork arms between parts (Fig. 6(b)). A special contour area of hexahedral elements for
the computation of the J-Integral was created, and thus KI and KII, were calculated over five contours and eight points along the crack
front. The average value of the five contours was considered for each point, and finally the maximum value along the crack front was
considered in order to calculate the fatigue crack propagation curve (see Fig. 7).

3. Results

3.1. Static analysis

The stress field in each component was computed using the finite element solver SOL 101 – linear statics – of NX Nastran. With the
stress field and taking into account nodular iron GJS-400-15’s mechanical properties (Sy = 250 MPa [5]), we computed the yielding
safety factor using the von Mises criterion. For the lower support we concluded that the most critical load case is the compression one
with a minimum safety factor of 2.42 at the bottom of the support (detail in Fig. 8a) while under tension the support presented a
minimum safety factor of 3.22).
Regarding the upper support, the most critical load case no longer occurs when the cantilever is in compression. Instead, the
maximum von Mises Stress occurs when the cantilever is under tension resulting in a minimum safety factor of 2.48 (Fig. 9(b)). In
contrast, the same support presents a safety factor of 30 when the cantilever is under tension (Fig. 9(a)). Comparing all load cases, we
can conclude that the most critical situation occurs for the lower support when the cantilever is under tension.
For all load cases, the most critical one occurs for the lower support whilst under compression. This occurs due to the bending
coupled with compression stress fields. The second most critical loading case occurs for the upper support under tension. In this case
the maximum stress occurs on the fork near the connection with the articulation since it behaves as a curved beam. Also, the
articulation interface with the cantilever is under high tension stress as depicted in Fig. 10.

b)

a)

Fig. 6. Finite element mesh for fracture mechanics analysis.

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 7. (a) Crack geometry and location and (b) crack mesh for J-integral computation.

Fig. 8. Safety factors in the lower cantilever support for (a) compression and (b) tension.

Fig. 9. Safety factors in the upper cantilever support for (a) compression and (b) tension.

3.2. Fracture and fatigue analysis

Considering the obtained results for the static structural analysis, four different conditions were assessed for fracture and fatigue.
For the upper cantilever supports, the most critical areas are defined as the fork arms between the articulation and the main support
body. For this case two conditions were analysed. First only one crack was considered on the support. As no bending loads are applied
in this case, a crack on either side of the support will be equally critical. Therefore, the influence of a straight crack passing through
one arm thickness was assessed. Using Eq. (3), for the computation of stress intensity factors, and the remote nominal normal stress
field σ, we computed the shape factor β, which is displayed in Fig. 11.
KI = a (3)

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 10. Detail of safety factors for upper console support under tension.

Fig. 11. Stress intensity factor, KI for one crack on the upper cantilever support under tension for several crack lengths.

It is possible to verify that KI, will always be below the fatigue crack propagation threshold and the material’s fracture toughness.
Therefore, no crack propagation will ocurr and there is no risk of brittle fracture occuring for this support configuration and applied
loads.
As expected (Fig. 12), the stress intensity factor is higher in the centre of the component due to the plane strain condition as
opposed to the points in the free arm surface where plane stress is dominant. When the crack length value increases, the stress
intensity factor increases as well, according to Eq. (3), since the shape factor is approximately constant. Since the studied crack
crosses the full arm thickness of the support, the stress intensity factor is not constant throughout the crack front. As one can see in
Fig. 12 for smaller cracks, the maximum value occurs near the crack centre, but as the crack grows, the maximum value will be
located near the arm free surface.
A second condition was considered for the upper cantilever support, two straight cracks, one on each of the support fork arms. The
obtained results, presented in Fig. 13, were only 20% higher, therefore no fatigue crack propagation or brittle fracture will occur. One
can attribute this behaviour to the low levels of stress in the support arms for this condition.
As for the lower cantilever support, the different loading conditions (Table 3) generate different crack opening possibilities. While
the vertical load tends to bend the support body, and contribute to crack opening, the horizontal load compresses the support body,
closing the crack. Considering the load values from Table 3, the tension case will be the critical one, as the bending load is very close
to the compression case value, but the lower horizontal load will keep the crack open, and therefore will increase the final stress

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 12. Stress intensity factor, KI along the crack front, for a crack in one arm of the upper cantilever support, under tension.

Fig. 13. Stress intensity factor, KI along the crack front, for a crack in each arm of the upper cantilever support, under tension.

Fig. 14. Stress distribution around a small crack on the critical area of the lower cantilever support, tension case.

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 15. Stress intensity factor, KI for a small crack on the lower cantilever support under tension.

intensity values. Two types of cracks were assessed. First a small crack propagating from one side only (Fig. 14). This small crack was
considered to have a length from 1 to 5 mm, along the flange of the support, running through the flange thickness.
The resulting stress intensity factor was calculated using the superposition method, considering the membrane (Km) and bending
loads (Kb). Using Eq. (3), the remote nominal normal stress field σ, was calculated using the constant membrane stress, σm, that can be
a compressive or tension stress, according to Table 3; and σb, or bending stress, that was considered to be equal to the outer fibre
bending stress [18]. The stresses were calculated using the data from Table 3, and the distance between the articulation and the
critical section on the lower cantilever support (for the computation of the bending moment acting on the cross-section). For both
cases the critical section’s shape was considered as an I-beam. The shape factors, βm and βb, for both cases were also calculated, as
depicted in Fig. 15. One can see that the maximum value of KI, is lower than 2.5 MPa m1/2. This means that there is a minimum safety
factor of 2.6, for crack propagation to occur. There’s also evidence, in the literature, of decrease of β for short plates with through
cracks both under uniaxial tension and bending [18] which approximates our load case near the crack.
When considering a crack with a higher length, a straight crack running from both sides of the support’s flange was considered.
Once again, the superposition method was applied considering the membrane and bending loads applied to the cantilever support for
the tension case. The crack can now achieve a higher length and the resulting stress intensity factor will therefore also be higher.
Fig. 16 shows the evolution of the membrane (Km) and bending (Kb) stress intensity factors, as well as the resulting stress intensity
factor, as the crack increases in length. Initially, as the crack propagates on the support flange, the stress intensity factor increases
linearly with the crack length. As the crack starts to propagate on the support web, the resulting stress intensity factor will increase at
a higher rate. Djoković et al. [19] achieved very similar results when considering the fatigue crack propagation life of an I-beam.
Considering the material’s fatigue crack propagation threshold and fracture toughness, there is the possibility of fatigue crack

Fig. 16. Stress intensity factor, KI for a large straight crack on the lower cantilever support under tension.

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

Fig. 17. Stress intensity factor, KI along the crack front, for a crack on the lower cantilever support, under tension.

propagation to occur for a crack length between 8.5 and 28.5 mm, before brittle fracture can occur.
On both crack cases, the membrane stress intensity factor (Km) is very small compared with the bending stress intensity factor
(Kb). Therefore, the resulting stress intensity factor, runs closer to Kb, but has an inferior value because, as mentioned, the membrane
stress tends to close the crack.
As the crack increases in length, the stress intensity factor profile will also evolve. Fig. 17 shows this evolution, for smaller cracks,
on the support web, the maximum value of KI, occurs on the web free surface. But for larger cracks on the support web, the maximum
value of KI occurs on the web centre.
The stress intensity factor for Mode II opening was also calculated. The main objective was to estimate the elastic mixity para-
meter [20], Me, (Eq. (4)), and to predict the crack tendency to kink. The minimum value obtained for the elastic mixity parameter was
0.95, therefore the crack was considered to propagate always in a straight line in pure Mode I (Me = 1).

2 KI
Me = arctan
KII (4)

Considering the obtained results and the material’s properties, one can predict the fatigue life of the cantilever support for the
worst working conditions. Using the Paris Law, Eq. (5), a straight crack running through the flange and web of the lower cantilever
support, loaded with the tension case from Table 3, can propagate from a 10.4 (when the crack propagation threshold is exceeded) to
32.5 (when the fracture toughness is achieved) mm length, when considering the mechanical properties of the GJS-400-15 nodular
cast iron.
da
= C Km
dN (5)

Applying a stress ratio of 0.1, corresponding to the most conservative cyclic load scenario, the total fatigue propagation life will be
equal to 2883 cycles.
As this material show a low fatigue crack propagation performance, the possibility of using other materials was assessed.
Considering the B319-T7 Al-Si-Cu alloy, the lower material’s fracture toughness, means the maximum crack length before brittle
fracture can occur will be only 18.5 mm. Assuming an initial crack of 8.5 mm necessary to initiate the propagation, a total of 213,080
cycles can be calculated. Considering the A365-T6 Al-Si-Mg alloy, and a final 22.5 mm crack length, the fatigue crack propagation of
the cantilever support would be 666,590 cycles, for the same loading conditions. Therefore, although the GJS-400-15 nodular cast
iron shows a higher fracture toughness, leading to a higher maximum crack length during propagation, this material is not suited for
fatigue crack propagation. Both aluminium alloys considered show a better fatigue propagation performance, with resulting fatigue
lives 74–231 times higher.

4. Discussion and conclusions

In this work we present a case study in design for standardization. We found that while the interfaces between the redesigned
modules and the remaining product remain the same, there is flexibility for the redesign of internal interfaces.
Using kinematic joints as starting points for concepts we can generate several different design concepts. For our case study we
found that maintaining the same set of joints as the original designs provided more adequate design solutions.
Finite element results indicate that the most critical loading mode occurs when the cantilever is under compression in a curve due

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D. Rechena, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 107 (2020) 104217

to the bending exerted on the lower console support. Still, when the console is under tension the upper support achieves stress levels
similar to the lower support when under compression. Results also show that maximum stress does not exceed the allowable limit of
123 MPa. A fatigue and fracture analysis showed that the tension loading is the worst-case scenario for the upper and lower cantilever
support. For one or two cracks on the fork arms of the upper cantilever support, analysis show that the maximum stress intensity
factor, KI does not exceed the fracture toughness of 40 MPa m1/2, and therefore there is no risk of brittle fracture. Also, the stress
intensity factor is also lower than the fatigue crack propagation threshold (7.5 MPa m1/2), and therefore there is also no risk of crack
propagation. this is attributed to the low loading and stress levels on the support arms. The minimum safety factors for fracture and
fatigue crack propagation are 7.6 and 1.5 respectively, for a 9 mm length crack. Nevertheless, one can see in Fig. 11, that the
computed shape function β for the upper cantilever support is very high. β also does not depend on the value of the crack length. The
average value for the shape function, on this type of crack, is around 4.0. While for a straight 10 mm crack on the lower cantilever
support, the shape function is less than 2.0 (Fig. 16). A higher shape function value will lead to a higher fatigue crack growth rate in
case of an overload. For the lower cantilever support while there is no risk of a single, one side, crack to propagate on the most critical
area, between the fork and the support main body, a large straight crack on the support web can actually propagate. A 4 mm one side
crack will have a 3.4 crack propagation safety factor, while an 8.5 mm straight crack on the support web can propagate until reaching
a total of 28.5 mm. In our finite element analysis crack propagation simulation, the crack was considered to propagate always in pure
Mode I. The stress intensity factors for Mode II were also calculated and a minimum elastic mixity parameter of 0.95 was obtained.
This is a way of quantifying the chosen simplification impact. According to the Maximum Tangential Stress (MTS) criterion [21], an
elastic mixity parameter of 0.95, means that the crack would be deflected around 10°. This would change the final crack location and
final fatigue crack propagation life. We considered the obtained value for the elastic mixity parameter to be close to 1, and therefore
simplified the problem by considering the crack to propagate in pure Mode I.
When considering a possible crack propagation between a crack length of 10.4–32.5 mm, and a stress ratio of 0.1, the final crack
propagation life will be 2883 cycles. This is a very low value, but consistent with the base material fatigue properties. This is of course
a worst-case scenario propagation, because it would need a very large initial defect to occur. However, these defects are not expected
to occur during the manufacturing process since typical defects do not achieve the required dimensions for crack propagation [8].
Considering the possibility of using a different material to manufacture the cantilever support, it is possible to use any of the Al-Si-Cu
and Al-Si-Mg alloys. These are also suitable for casting parts and show a superior fatigue crack propagation performance, resulting in
74–231 times higher fatigue lives.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT) under grant PD/BD/105989/2014.
This work was supported by “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT), through the Institute of Mechanical Engineering
(IDMEC) under the Associated Laboratory for Energy, Transports and Aeronautics (LAETA), Project UID/EMS/50022/2019.
All the technical data pertaining to the original designs as well as railway data was supplied by Infraestruturas de Portugal

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