Research on motion sickness on board railway vehicles

Few passengers experience motion sickness on board today's railway vehicles (conventional and high speed trains). Nonetheless, tests carried out on tilt body rolling stock have shown a marked reaction to sensitiveness to motion sickness. This article presents ongoing studies aimed at identifying the conditions that give rise to the feeling of motion sickness and at developing an indicator for the comfort specifications of future tilt body rolling stock. The first part of the article presents the work carried out in a laboratory with a control group on a test bench. The influence of vertical and lateral movements well as roll on the emergence of motion sickness was studied. These studies have been followed by site testing on a tilt body TGV demonstrator train to validate the findings of laboratory tests. A second part deals with the psychological and physiological approaches to identifying the mechanisms responsible for the emergence of motion sickness. These approaches help in particular to identify the influence of passenger activities based on the concept of sensorial conflict, which is the cause of motion sickness.