Abstract: The passive safety technology in rail vehicles is gaining more and more attention as the ultimate barrier to ensure the safe operation of trains. Aiming at the problems of complex structure and high production cost of vehicle energy absorbing device, a two-stage crushing structure energy absorbing unit beam design scheme is proposed, and the influence of wall thickness of different energy absorbing element beams on energy absorption performance is studied by combining the finite element analysis and crash test. Then the dynamic impact test is carried out on the energy absorbing parts based on the simulation calculation results. The results show that the average energy absorption of the energy absorption device is very close, which can effectively realize the controllable and orderly plastic deformation in the process of full energy absorption, and the average force value after the structure yields does not exceed the static longitudinal bearing value of the vehicle body, which has obvious application advantages in meeting the vehicle design requirements while reducing the complexity of the structure and realizing the cost reduction and efficiency increase of the product.