New Axlebox Design for the Railway Freight Market
SKF has developed a new design for axleboxes to help customers reduce weight and improve the performance of bogies while reducing the environmental impact. The new Y25 axlebox, designed for trains weighing up to 25 tons, complies with industry standards.
Including bearing housing, front cover, sealing collars and fasteners the new housing weighs 80 kg which is significantly lighter than earlier SKF Y25 models. This is mainly due to design and material changes. With a lower unsprung mass, the new housing helps to reduce component, track and infrastructure wear. Weight reduction of rolling stock is one of the key priorities in the railway industry to meet sustainability and efficiency goals.
The axlebox is manufactured in SKFs in-house production facility in France.
“Our customers are looking for more sustainable solutions. Any weight reduction of the components will impact the energy balance of the train and support the ability to add additional cargo. The new design features will offer more opportunities and flexibility for wheelset designs in freight.”
The new Y25 is design-ready for various bearing types, allowing for greater choices when designing or exchanging bearing solutions to optimise the wheelset performance. This includes cylindrical roller bearings and units and tapered roller bearing units.
The updated design of the Y25 axlebox is fully interchangeable with existing axlebox assemblies. It will be showcased at InnoTrans 2022, held in Germany in September.
This article was originally published by SKF.
SKF’s mission is to be the undisputed leader in the bearing business. We do this by offering solutions that reduce friction and CO2 emissions, whilst at the same time increasing machine uptime and performance. Our products and services around the rotating shaft, include bearings, seals, lubrication management, artificial intelligence and wireless condition monitoring. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 17,000 distributor locations worldwide. Annual sales in 2021 were SEK 81 732 million and the number of employees was 42,602.
