Trains are becoming a popular way of transportation driven by comfort and ecology reasons. Latest statistics showed an increasing of 40% on the number of passengers in the last decade. The development of new high-speed trains promoted an evolution on the coaches interiors, as to make railway transportation more attractive. To cope this objective, new requirements were set, namely high levels of comfort and safety. In complement, multiple long-term ride comfort evaluation methods have been developed. The aim of this work is to present a review on the passengers’ comfort perception in railway vehicles. The standards ISO 2631, EN 12299 and the Sperling’s method are the most used ones. They refer several factors, as the vibration (level, frequency and duration), temperature, noise and area of the train per capita. Additionally, the perception of reduced accidents delayed the studies of passive security. Therefore, recent works focus on reducing the consequences of the second impact in case of accident and minimize the biomechanics injury criterion, through new interiors design layouts. Keywords: Railway vehicles, Passengers comfort, Posture, Ride evaluation, Passive safety
Railways are one of the most widely used mass transportation systems. Its superior transportation capacity, low environmental impact, high safety, and comfort have been leading to a continuous increase in passengers. To keep this trend going, it is crucial to improve the railways’ attractiveness and comfort levels. A rail journey’s comfort performance is rather complex, involving the analysis of multiple factors. Those raised by the vehicle motion and seat performance are the focus of vehicle designers’ concerns. Therefore, only a combination of static and dynamic comfort methodologies can accurately characterize passengers’ comfort. This work aimed to perform a systematic review concerning the comfort evaluation of train passengers. The bibliographic search yielded 62 studies on static and dynamic comfort evaluation methods. Results show a lack of experiments conducted on real rail environments, leading to weak conclusions regarding the real in-service conditions that train users face. Moreover, an investigation gap concerning the simultaneous application of both static and dynamic methodologies was observed. Therefore, more investigations are needed to evaluate and increase passengers’ comfort and promote rail usage as a daily transportation system.
Railways are among the most efficient and widely used mass transportation systems for mid-range distances. To enhance the attractiveness of this type of transport, it is necessary to improve the level of comfort, which is much influenced by the vibration derived from the train motion and wheel-track interaction; thus, railway track infrastructure conditions and maintenance are a major concern. Based on discomfort levels, a methodology capable of detecting railway track infrastructure failures is proposed. During regular passenger service, acceleration and GPS measurements were taken on Alfa Pendular and Intercity trains between Porto (Campanhã) and Lisbon (Oriente) stations. ISO 2631 methodology was used to calculate instantaneous floor discomfort levels. By matching the results for both trains, using GPS coordinates, 12 track section locations were found to require preventive maintenance actions. The methodology was validated by comparing these results with those obtained by the EM 120 track inspection vehicle, for which similar locations were found. The developed system is a complementary condition-based maintenance tool that presents the advantage of being low-cost while not disturbing regular train operations.
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