"EVALUATION OF RIDE AND ACTIVITY COMFORT FOR THE PASSENGERS WHILE TRAVELLING BY RA VEHICLES"

Abstract

Many people use the train both as a daily means of transport as well as a working place to carry out sedentary activities such as reading,, writing or eating. There are, however, several important factors in this environment that will hamper good performance of such activities. Some of the main sources of disturbance, apart form other train passengers, are noise and vibrations generated from the train itself. Although there are standards available for evaluation of ride comfort in vehicles but none• of them consider the effects that vibrations have on particular passengers' activities. In this study the effects of vibration on train passengers' sedentary activities were investigated with a questionnaire survey as well as by onboard vibration measurements. Three types of Indian Inter-city trains (Indian Railways) were studied in the route fromSaharanpur to Haridwar on three consecutive days. In total 82 passengers were randomly selected for the questionnaire survey. The vibration measurements were made at floor and table during normal service. The vibration data were analyzed according to ENV 12299. ENV 12299 standard evaluates the ' "Mean Comfort" by simplified method when considering vibration measurement at the floor alone. As per the questionnaire survey 15-40% of the passengers reported moderate difficulties in performing sedentary activities like reading and writing whereas 5-20 % passengers had much difficulty due to vibrations and jerks. However, the standardized measurements did not reveal any severe discomfort values due to the vibrations, the Mean Comfort Index calculated for all the three trains was in the range of "comfortable" and "medium". This reveals that ENV 12299 standard does not evaluate vibration's effect on sedentary activities adequately. This also indicates that even low levels of vibration can reduce the ability to perform sedentary activities to a considerable extent. iii