Hello everyone and welcome to the channel. So today in this brief video we will talk about what a sharpened bird coupler is, how it works and some interesting facts about the coupler. So around the world hundreds of trains are coupled and uncoupled every day and this is done using many many different types of couplers. One of them being a sharpened bird coupler. Can you identify in this picture which one is a sharpened bird coupler? That's right it's the one on the bottom right. So on a high level these are the components of a sharpened bird coupler. There's a cone, there's a cup and there's a electrical head. However later in the video we will look at coupler in more detail. I want you to notice a couple of things here. The first thing is that the coupling is happening while the train is in motion and this is important because some couplers require the trains to be stationary for coupling. However, sharpened bird coupler requires train to be in motion for it to properly couple and the second thing is that these electrical head that you see it's not extended right now and it will extend after the train has successfully coupled. So you'll see here. Yep at this point it couples and then the electrical pin extends for the coupling. Now just some facts about sharpened bird coupler. So this coupler was developed between 1904 and 1907. It was introduced in 1925 in Berlin and has been used worldwide ever since. It's also called Shaku and that name is abbreviated from its German name which is sharpened bird coupling. Another thing is that it's a coupler type and it's not a product name. What that means is this coupler type can be manufactured by different suppliers. Some of them being voiced and delir. And there are multiple types such as their type 10 type 330 type 430 to so on and so forth based on their application. However, type 10 is now a standard for high speed rail in Europe and it was standardized in EN16019. So traditional way of classifying couplers has been manual semi-automatic or automatic with manual being where the vehicles are coupled manually. Then the pneumatic and electrical lines are joined mechanically are joined manually and then the trains are uncoupled manually. In semi-automatic, the mechanical connection of couplers is automatic but then the pneumatic and electrical connections and the coupling is all done by hand manually. And then the automatic ones are fully automatic meaning all of those mechanical connections, pneumatic connections, electrical connections and decoupling. All of that is done automatically. And Sharfenberg according to traditional classification is an automatic coupler. Now the other classification is from TIS and they have broken down these sub functions of a coupler and they have defined categories based on the automation of those functions. For example, type 1 is where the mechanical connection is automatic but everything else is manual. Type 2 is where mechanical and the brake pipe is automatic, everything else is manual and so on and so forth. And according to this classification also where all of these sub functions are done automatically. Now some more fact what you can see is there's rigid type of couplers and there's non-rigid but Sharfenberg is a rigid type of coupler. What that means is that there's no relative movement between two coupler heads and there are some implications because of that. So the first implication is that because of no relative movement there is barely any wear and tear on this coupler. Whereas on a non-rigid coupler such as knuckle couplers there's a lot of relative movement between two coupler heads which then results in a lot of wear and tear. But then on the other hand because there is no relative movement the whole assembly needs to then account for some transfer movement. So there has to be some mechanism here which allows for some rotational movements along this axis whereas on this coupler the non-rigid type it can account for offsets without having to require any specific or specialized mechanism here. Another thing is that Sharfenberg coupler on an average does not have the highest tonnage or highest hollage capacity. Janney coupler which is used more often in the US has a higher tonnage and you can see it almost goes up to 2900 kilo Newton where Sharfenberg is only at 2000s it's almost 50 percent higher. Now I want you to notice they're both side 10 couplers but the electrical connections are on the side here whereas they're on the top here. This for the ice Germany is on the side and here the DGV you'll see that the electrical connection is on top and the electrical connection is established after mechanical connection and the reason is that the electrical pins are not strong enough if there is some offset between the two coupler heads then the electrical pins will get damaged due to the high impact. So because of that the couplers first couple mechanically and after they are fully secured then the electrical pins extend. One of the important factors that pertains to couplers is called gathering range and what gathering range means is that two trains can couple successfully even if they have some offset vertically or horizontally. So for Sharfenberg coupler a plus minus 140 mm vertical offset between two coupler heads or this much offset horizontally between two coupler heads can still result in a successful coupling. So here by the shaded portion you can see this is the gathering range which means that if the second coupler head is anywhere within this portion the trains will still be able to couple and amongst all these coupler types Sharfenberg coupler actually has the highest gathering range. The benefit obviously is that now your coupler can accommodate more geographical factors more offset more curves and that then improves the operative performance of the railway system overall. The second fact is that they need a minimum coupling speed in the range of 0.5 to 1.2 km per hour and because of that speed the coupler needs to have some sort of a damping mechanism to absorb those forces and we'll see both of these in action. So in this video I want you to notice at the point of coupling that there is a very clear offset between the two coupler heads and also after coupling there's a springy movement which shows that there is a damping mechanism. So here you'll notice this coupler moves a little bit. Yeah yeah so we look at that again you'll see this coupler adjusts so because it's in the gathering range and then there's this springy movement to absorb all the forces. Now before we conclude the video let's look at the operating mechanism. So at this point the two couplers are approaching each other and I like to mention that this is called a hoop. This is called obviously a spring. This is a disc. This is a notch. So when two trains approach each other what happens is that this disc exerts a force on this hoop and this disc exerts a force on this hoop and this force pushes the hoop outside resulting in a rotational movement of this disc. This hoop pushes outside resulting in a rotational movement of that disc. So these two discs start rotating until this notch aligns with the hoop and the hoop then falls within within the notch. So we look at that at this point it starts pushing and yeah right at this point you see that the hoop will fall within the notch and the moment it falls within the notch a spring then pulls the hoop backward and when the spring moves backward that's when the train has successfully coupled and the whole mechanism becomes interlocked. It's pushing it falls in the notch and it becomes properly coupled. Now for uncoupling what you have to do is if it's manual uncoupling you have to pull this lever or if it's automatic coupling there's probably a pneumatic range when pulling this down and what that does is that once you pull this down the disc rotates and rotates to a point where the hoop is now released from the notch and the point at which it's released from the notch and at that point the trains can now move apart. Yeah it falls within the notch now it's properly coupled now it's time to uncouple you pull this falls outside of the notch and right now there's no more interlocking so the trains can now move apart and uncouple. So that brings me to the end of the video thanks a lot and see you in the next one.