Investigation of Passenger Ride Comfort in a Railway Wagon for Various Suspension Parameters

Abstract

Comfort for passenger in rail vehicles is still currant topic. Passengers often choose the preferred kind of transport just based on the comfort level. This article is focused on the investigation of passenger ride comfort in a railway wagon for various suspension parameters. The theoretical approach comes from a description of the applied method necessary to create a virtual model of an evaluated railway wagon and it also includes the method for evaluation of the passenger ride comfort. The passenger ride comfort in a wagon is evaluated by means of the standard method, at which, the passenger ride comfort indices marked as NMV in the determined locations on a wagon body floor are calculated. The calculation of the passenger ride comfort NMV index requires to know values of the accelerations signals in all three directions as an input. The section of the article presents the obtained results of simulation computations. There were changed the stiffness-damping parameters of the primary and secondary suspension system and their values have been changed in three levels. The railway wagon vehicle has been running on a model of a real track section. The passenger ride indices NMV have been calculated for all three variants of the wagon fifteen points located on the wagon body floor. The research results have shown, that lower values of stiffness of the secondary suspension system affects the passenger ride comfort more significantly than the lower values of stiffness-damping parameters of the primary suspension.