The effect of onboard passengers’ seating arrangement on the vertical ride comfort of a high-speed railway vehicle

Abstract

This research is concerned with the impact of onboard passengers’ seating arrangement on the carbody flexural vibrations of a high-speed railway vehicle. In this regard, the previously developed passenger body-seat models are used to consider the dynamic influence of the passengers. The carbody is modeled using the Euler–Bernoulli beam model to evaluate its flexural deformation. The frequency-domain analysis demonstrates that the carbody behaves almost like a rigid body when the vehicle is full of passengers. It is established that the passengers' presence causes a 31% enhancement of the ride quality determined based on EN 12299 standard for a fully occupied vehicle compared with an empty car. A scaled model of a ratio of 1:24.5 of the Shinkansen vehicle is constructed for validation purposes. The experimental results exhibit a similar trend as found by the simulations in terms of the impact of the passengers’ distribution on the carbody flexural vibrations.