INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE

Attributes of Passenger Comfort in Rail

Transport

Under the guidance of

Dr. E Rajsekar

and

Dr. Abinash Kumar Swain

Kapil Kumar Sinha

2

Introduction

A metro journey

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Introduction

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Aim and Objective

Objectives

• To identify significant attributes for passenger comfort and its indicators.

• To understand the various technique for assessing passenger comfort

• To understand the factors contributing in passenger comfort for improving

passenger comfort and wellbeing.

Aim

• To discuss the concepts of comfort and attributes of the passenger comforts in Rail

Transport environment

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Literature Study

Human Comfort

The comfort model developed by Looze (2003)

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Literature Study

Human Comfort in Vehicle Environment

• Local Comfort

• Organisational Comfort

Riding Comfort

Mayr's circle of riding comfort (1959)

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Factor of Passenger Comfort

Other Factors

• Journey Length

• Seat Design

• Interior Design

• Organisational factors

• Shocks and Vibration

• Noise

• Thermal Environment

• Visual Environment

• Air QualityAm

bie

nt

Fa

cto

r

Subjective in Nature

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Ambient Factor

Shocks and Vibration

Indices

• RMS Vibration Level (ISO 2631)

• Sperling Ride Index(Wz)

• Due to track and wheel interaction

• Primary and Secondary suspension

Whole-body vibrations occur when the human

body is in contact with vibration surface.

Seating . Standing . Laying

Considering Vibration for

• preservation of comfort,

• preservation of work efficiency

• preservation of health and safety.

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Ambient Factor

Noise

Indices• Preferred Speech Interference Level(PSIL)

• Zwicker Model (ISO 532 B)

Unwanted sound between 20Hz- 20kHx leads to annoyance

Moving Vehicle is source of Numerous types of noise

Airborne Noise: Aerodynamic Noise

Structural Noise: Transmission and Suspension Resonance, Body Structure Resonance

etc.

Steady State Sound Transient Sound

SUBJECTIVE FACTORS: Pleasant or Not

The acoustic samples in the train (pleasantness, level in dBA).

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Ambient Factor

Thermal Environment

Indices

• Predicted Mean Value PMV (Fanger)(ISO 7730)

• Relative Warmth Index (Developed for Underground Condition)

Thermal Comfort ‘that condition of mind that expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment’

Air TemperatureRadiant TemperatureAir VelocityRelative HumidityClothing InsulationMetabolic Rate

SensationThermal PreferenceStickinessPleasantnessDraught

OBJECTIVE FACTORS SUBJECTIVE FACTORS

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Ambient Factor

Visual Environment(Illuminance)

Indices• Lux Level

• Visual Comfort Probability (VCP)

• Luminance distribution within field of view

(e.g. contrast, luminance ratio between

horizontal and vertical surfaces ….)

• ‘Preventing’ glare

• Light distribution in the car and task (e.g.

direct/diffuse, daylight/artificial light)

• Colour properties of the light

A consideration of the illumination level within a

vehicle is important for three reasons,

safety, convenience and comfort.

Not just

Illuminance level

For Visual Comfort

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Ambient Factor

Air Quality

Indices

• Indoor Air Quality Index (I)

• Ventilation, Comfort Parameter as per CPCB

loss of quality is mainly caused by

• Gases resulting from breathing and other organic functions.

• presence of moisture

• combustion gases and particles

Insufficient

Ventilation

loss in air quality mainly leads to

• Fatigue

• Odour annoyance etc.

Concentration of various gases

majorly CO2, CO, PMAir Circulation Study

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Attributes

Attributes of Passenger Comfort

Attributes Standards Index Research Paper Author Index Used Study TypeVibration and

Shock

ISO 2631 RMS Vibration

Level, Sperling

Index(Wz)

Determination of Activity Comfort in Swedish Passenger Trains Ramasamy

Narayanamoorthy,

Shafiquzzaman Khan,

RMS, Sperling Ride

Index

Both Subjective

and Objective

Experimental and Analytical Ride Comfort Evaluation of a Railway Coach K. V. Gangadharan,

C.Sujatha, V. Ramamurti

Sperling Index, RMS Objective

Noise ISO 532 Preferred Speech

Interference(PSIL

), Zwicker Model

Index for vehicle acoustical comfort inside a passenger car Mohd Jailani Mohd Nor,

Mohammad Hosseini

Zwicker Loudness

Index

Objective

ASSESSMENT OF THE ACOUSTICAL COMFORT IN HIGH-SPEED TRAINS AT THE

SNCF:INTEGRATION OF SUBJECTIVE PARAMETERS

F. LED TOURNEAUX AND

S. GUERRAND

Subjective

Railway passengers and noise A E J Hardy PSIL Objective

Illuminance/

Visual Comfort

LUX Level, Visual

Comfort

Probability

A Comparison of the Visual Comfort Probability

and Unified Glare Rating SystemsRichard G. Mistrick & An-

Seop Choi

Computing Visual Comfort Rating Sylvester K Guth VCP

Air

Quality/Ventilatio

n

BS 1042 Indoor Air

Quality Index

Air quality in passenger cars of the ground railway transit system in Beijing Tian-Tian Li, Yu-Hua Bai,

Zhao-Rong Liu, Jin-Feng

Liu

Objective

CFD ANALYSIS OF INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY IN

COMMUTER TRAIN

Seohiro Kikuchi, Kazuhide

Ito

In-train air quality assessment of the railway transit system

in Beijing: A note

Tian-Tian Li, Yu-Hua Bai,

Zhao-Rong Liu, Jin-Feng

Liu

IAQ Index Objective

Thermal ISO 7726,

ISO 7730,

ISO 10551

Predicted Mean

Value, Relative

Warmth Index

Thermal comfort evaluation in Tehran metro using Relative

Warmth IndexM. Abbaspour, M. J. Jafari,

N. Mansouri, F. Moattar,

N. Nouri, M. Allahyari

RWI Objective

Parameters and Models of the Vehicle

Thermal Comfort

Radu MUSAT, Elena

HELEREA

PMV

Thermal comfort on Train Journeys Lisa K. Kelly PMV Both Subjective

and Objective

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Multi Attribute Assessment

• Multi Attribute Assessments is a study in which discomfort due to multiple

stresses are taken simultaneously

• There are very less Literature available on Multi Attribute Assessment for

Passenger comfort.

Ride

Comfort

Index

Vibration

Noise

• M. J. Griffin(1995): studied multiple factors in the comfort evaluation of vehicles

and identifying the possible causes of annoyance, and defined way to create a

weighted index.

• University of Coimbra :Thermal comfort, air quality, noise, vibration, and global

comfort were evaluated in the study on the comfort conditions in public

transportation buses

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Case Study

The Quality of rail carriage environment

• The aims of the study were to determine passengers‘

perceptions of their carriage environment, and to

discover what improvements they would most like to

see.

• The study was carried by London Midland

• Response from stratified sample of 1500 passenger

was collected

• Study evaluated Five different type coaches in terms of

their quality

• The questionnaire included sections covering personal

and travel details, a check list of conceivable

improvements

• The semantic differential technique was used in

gaining an insight of passengers.

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Case Study

• Thermal comfort on train journeys

• The aims of the study was to determine thermal

comfort on train journeys.

• The study was carried between Loughborough and

Leicester & Sileby and Syston

• Study was carried on two environments Laboratory

and Field.

• Subjective responses were also taken simultaneously

along with the Physical Measurements.

• Response from 44 subjects was collected

• Laboratory experiments were validated through the

field study.

• Subjective factors was then correlated with physical

measurement.

• PMVTRANS and PMV was used as index for Thermal

comfort later in the study it was found that PMV was

more accurate estimator in Railway Carriage

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Future Work

• Evaluation of Comfort based on Thermal and Air Quality over different types of

railway compartment over a stretch.

• Evaluation of attributes of passenger comforts along the different routes in a

passenger compartment.

• Evaluation of passenger comfort of railway coach during different seasons in a year.

Subjective Assessment + Physical Measurement

Multi Attribute Assessment

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