Development and application of new evaluation system for ride comfort and vibration on railway vehicles

Vibrations related to ride comfort should be considered at the beginning of design stage. In general, ride comfort of human is mainly affected by vibration transmitted from the floor and seat. Also, vibration level is very important regarding with running safety on freight wagon. To ensure ride comfort for passenger coach and vibration level for freight wagon, tests had been repeated by different test procedures with several equipments. With different measuring and evaluations for these results, it took much time to evaluate test results. In this paper, a new evaluation procedure was developed combining several software for ride comfort and vibration level test on railway vehicles. In addition, this developed system is capable of ride comfort test and vibration test by a single integrated system that is capable of immediate reporting the test result. With this developed system, the comfort in a passenger coach and the vibration in a freight car were evaluated. And the simulation results from the proposed system are verified by a field test.