Momentary discomfort caused by vibration of railway vehicle

When trains pass level crossings or turnouts, they are momentarily subject to relatively strong vibrations. In railway engineering, evaluation of the riding comfort under such occasional vibrations is called the momentary evaluation, which is distinguished from the long-term evaluation. In order to identify the effective vibrational characteristics on the momentary evaluation now controversial in Japan, an experiment was performed with a riding comfort simulator. Twenty adult subjects were exposed to lateral vibration with varying peak acceleration and crest factor. Referring to the vibrations of real trains, the peak acceleration in the range of 0.35-2.00 m/s2 were varied in steps of 0.35 m/s2 and the crest factors in the range of 1.5-5.0 were varied in steps of 0.5. The frequency was set constant at 2 Hz. The task was to rate the degree of discomfort under each vibration which was given them successively. Results indicate that changes in the peak acceleration are most effective, and application of the crest factor in parallel improves the correlation with the perceived discomfort. Whether subjects can perceive changes in the peak or not affects the evaluation. Weights of vibrational characteristics that make a cue to the evaluation by subjects differ from person to person.