Ride Comfort Evaluation for the Korean Experimental High-speed Train

Ride comfort is one of the most important dynamic performance characteristics of railway vehicles and it is affected by various factors such as vibration, noise, smell, temperature, visual stimuli, humidity and seat design. Evaluating ride comfort is not simple because all these factors must be considered simultaneously. In general, vibration, which originates from vehicle motion, is taken as the primary concern. The vibration of railway vehicles becomes very complex because it is affected by the condition of vehicles, including wheel profile, suspensions and equipments in the vehicles, and the condition of track sections, including rail profile, rail irregularities, cant, and curvature. In addition, operating conditions, such as frequent starts or stops and speed restrictions, are also major factors that affect the vibration of railway vehicles. This paper deals with the ride comfort of HSR-350x, a proto-type train developed in Korea since 2002. In order to evaluate the ride comfort of a railway vehicle, it is very important to consider the correlation between passenger’s feeling and vibration of the vehicle. Human feelings vary with frequencies of vibration even if the intensities for all frequencies vibration are equal, as in the case of acoustic noise. Therefore, a weighted vibration considering human feeling has been used to evaluate the ride comfort of HSR-350x. A total of 362 ride indices have been acquired by the statistical evaluation method UIC513 at train speed of 80~310 km/h from 2002 to 2006. The characteristics of ride comfort for HSR350x have been investigated considering the operation conditions, such as load/track conditions, seasons and annual variations.